We (1969)

Artavazd Péléchian (Armenia) is a filmmaker born in Gyumri (then Leninakan), Armenia, in 1938. He studied at VGIK in Moscow from 1963–68 and created most of his work while based in Moscow between 1964 and 1993. Over those thirty years, from the heart of the Soviet studio system, he made a dozen uniquely crafted films composed of both documentary images taken from archives and actual footage shot by the filmmaker (or by his close collaborator, the cinematographer Mikhail Vartanov). These images were reworked and edited together using a technique the filmmaker called “distance montage” to produce visual poems that escape the classical distinction between fiction and documentary. Although initially not well-distributed or screened internationally, Péléchian’s films eventually received due recognition at venues including Berlinale, Venice International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, Media City Film Festival, and International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam. British Film Institute now includes his best-known film Seasons of the Year (1975) on both their lists of Greatest Documentaries of All Time and Greatest Films of All Time. Péléchian is also the author of several texts on film theory, including the influential My Cinema (1988). He was awarded the titles of Merited Artist of the Armenian SSR (1979) and Merited Artist of the Russian Federation (1995). He lives and works between Yerevan, Armenia, and Moscow, Russia.