02/05/2024 - The Armenian first-time filmmaker provides an insight into the emotional approach to finding the right artistic language for expressing her family’s grief

(© Mariana Hristova)

We sat down to speak with Shoghakat Vardanyan, who, in her independent and shoestring-budget debut, 1489 [+see also:
film review
interview: Shoghakat Vardanyan
film profile], documents the heartbreaking journey of her family as they search for her brother, who went missing during the 44-day Nagorno Karabakh War in 2020. After winning both IDFA’s Best Film and FIPRESCI Awards last November, the film also received the jury’s Special Mention at the goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film (24-30 April), which has just wrapped in Wiesbaden (see the news).

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Cineuropa: You are a pianist, but you chose the camera as your tool to express the feelings around a very difficult personal period. Why cinema?
Shoghakat Vardanyan: Because words and music were not coming out of me. I was kind of stuck and silent. And then, suddenly, film found me. At that time, I was enrolled in a school for investigative journalism, and my teacher in the mobile journalism class, Inna Mkhitaryan, who was aware of what I was going through, suggested that I start making a video blog, where I follow the process of searching for my brother, so as to keep myself concentrated on something. But already on the third day of this exercise, I filmed something else. Every day, I came to understand more and more about how and what to film. I felt a sudden urgency to capture our life without my brother's return, recognising the importance of filming, even though I hoped he would come back. I felt its significance not just for me, but also for every person in the world who is going through war.

What about the form? Did you have a firm concept in mind?
I followed my intuition. I remember that feeling of my brain burning or of sinking at certain moments. During the filming process, I constantly needed to make swift decisions and to rehearse mentally. There are parallels to my experience with playing piano, where mental practice was essential in order to master it. I recognised that while filming allowed for improvisation, it also required anticipating various scenarios and considering angles, an activity that my brain naturally engaged in, even when not actively filming.

How did you persuade your parents to participate?
Perhaps the closest thing to a true explanation for me is that when you really want to film people, sooner or later, they let you film them.

Acclaimed documentarian Marina Razbezhkina was the creative producer of 1489. What influence did she have on your work?
I met her at a very important moment, when I had my rough cut and had started editing two final scenes. I waited so long to meet somebody I could trust as a professional to talk to about my film. And then someone told me there was a workshop being given by Marina Razbezhkina. I didn’t even know who she was, but she had heard about my project already and invited me to her workshop. Eventually, she became my filmmaking “godmother”. We were thinking about the film separately, and then talking; she would ask important questions and give me advice when I needed it. Another person who was near me was Davit Stepanyan, an Armenian cultural critic and filmmaker.

And you made it without a production company behind you. That must have been very difficult.
I couldn’t just leave the story aside and go after funding. I also chose to listen to the material and to let it tell me things – from how to edit it to how to distribute it. I quickly understood the “normal way” of filmmaking, but this work required more than that.

1489 is personal and political at the same time. How do you think it could influence the international perception of the complex situation in Armenia?
It’s my family’s story, but it’s also a universal and necessary film. I grapple with the silence surrounding the recent ethnic cleansing in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), feeling the weight of its absence from global discourse, despite its significance. When presenting my film abroad, I'm often confronted with the politicised nature of international attention and feel marginalised in discussions of global conflict. In other words, the powerful countries, including European ones, have things to gain from Azerbaijan, regardless of the lives of Armenians. Bearing in mind that Armenians were, and still are, suffering genocide physically and culturally, we are not only being left alone, but the world is on the side of evil. It’s just a business. This is what happened to Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) and what I’m afraid will happen in Armenia soon if nothing is done. It is the continuation of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. If the world weren't to remain silent and had actually pushed Turkey to recognise it, we wouldn’t have suffered from wars and ethnic cleansing up to the present day.

It is not easy to talk when the world isn’t on your side. I can see that international laws are also a kind of business. But the world is wrong – in the end, evil also turns on those who passively participate in it.