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HOLLYWOOD, CA — Armenian film director Mikhail Vartanov passed away on
December 31st, 2009 in Hollywood, California at age 72.
Vartanov was born on February 21st, 1937 in Grozny, Russia to Martiros
Vartaniantz and Lusine Kasparian. From a young age, Vartanov worked as a
photographer and a movie projectionist, then graduated Moscow’s prestige
film institute, VGIK, in 1965 and came to Armenia for the first time. He
began his oeuvre in cinema with a wordless documentary film, "The Color of
Armenian Land" (1969), in which he presented the ancient and modern art and
history of Armenia through painter Martiros Saryan’s silent commentary of
gestures. The film also featured Vartanov’s close friends, the dissident
painter Minas Avetisyan and the filmmaker Sergei Parajanov. Since then,
Vartanov struggled for work and against censorship.
His next film, "Autumn Pastoral" (1971), based on Artavazd Peleshian’s
screenplay and scored by composer Tigran Mansurian, was shelved. Four months
after the imprisonment of Sergei Paradjanov, whom Vartanov bravely
supported, he was fired from the Armenfilm studio during the filming of the
documentary "Kajaran" (1974). Artavazd Peleshian and then Gennadi Melkonian
tirelessly petitioned the Armenian and Russian authorities to allow Vartanov
to work. In 1975, Vartanov lensed the classic "Seasons of the Year,"
directed by Peleshian, who used no archive footage for the first time and
relied exclusively on Vartanov’s cinematography and wizardry in the lab. In
1979, Vartanov co-wrote the director’s screenplay and filmed the beloved hit
comedy, "The Mulberry Tree," directed by Gennadi Melkonian.
After a 9 year absence from directing, Vartanov was asked to save a project,
`The Roots’ (1984), which the majority of the Armenfilm filmmakers deemed
uncinematic; he later wrote that it was best film produced that year in
Armenia. During this time, Vartanov published essays on Parajanov,
Peleshian, Armenak Khachaturyan, Jean Carzou, and a series of "Unmailed
Letters", which cemented his reputation, among a small number of Armenian
intelligentsia, as one of the most important intellectuals of his
generation.
His last work in Armenia was a trilogy of documentary films, "Erased Faces"
(1987), "Minas: A Requiem" (1989), and his influential masterpiece
"Parajanov: The Last Spring" (1992), which earned awards and praise of
international celebrities and press and continues to be screened around the
world.
Vartanov leaves behind a large number of unpublished writings, photographs,
drawings, collages, assemblages, and footage documenting the surreal little
world he created in his Hollywood apartment.
"He has taught us through personal lessons and his films to look at this
without sadness and we are trying to do that. For him, Death and Immortality
were one and the same, and let it be so," reads the message from his son,
daughter and wife.
The service will be held on Saturday, January 9th, 2010 at 11:00am at the
Saint John Armenian Apostolic Church, 1201 Vine Street, Hollywood.