Legendary Armenian filmmaker Artavazd Peleshian is set to release La Nature (or Nature), his first film in almost three decades at an exhibition in Paris.
Premiered by the Fondation Cartier, La Nature brings together amateur shots of nature, such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, and grandiose landscapes from the internet, juxtaposing the overpowering force of nature with human ambition.
In addition to La Nature, the exhibition is also showing Peleshian’s celebrated 1975 film The Seasons, which spotlights peasant life.
Born in the city of Gyumri, Armenia, in 1938, Peleshian is a director of essay films and documentaries, whose non-narrative style creates a language unique to cinema. His 13 films include, among others, the 1967 movies We, which presents a poetic history of Armenia, The Beginning, a cinematographic essay on the 1917 Russian Revolution, and 1970’s Inhabitants, which also reflects on the relationship between humans and wildlife.
Fellow Armenian Sergei Parajanov described Peleshian as “one of the few authentic geniuses in the world of cinema”. A key Soviet documentary director, he only became known to the West in the 1980s thanks to French director Jean Luc Godard and French film critic Serge Daney, who said: “I suddenly have the feeling of coming face to face with a missing link in the true history of cinema.”
The exhibition is running 24 October 2020 -7 March 2021. Find out more here.