Les saisons

Armenian filmmaker Artavazd Peleshian has already been compared to Dziga Vertov, Bruce Connor, and the young Werner Herzog, but on the evidence of this brief featurette (it's only 30-minutes long) he emerges as a unique, exciting discovery in his own right. His work is almost impossible to describe, except (inadequately) as non-narrative short subjects, a blanket category which says nothing about the visceral impact of both pieces in the program I attended, during the 1987 San Francisco International Film Festival (where 'The Four Seasons' screened alongside Peleshian's 'In the Beginning').

'The Four Seasons' presents a series of hypnotic and powerful images from his native country: of shepherds and their flocks fording a torrential mountain river, and farmers grappling with what look like huge haystacks on a near-vertical mountainside. 'In The Beginning', equally spectacular, is a quick, kinetic flow of brilliantly edited found footage: crowds running; armies colliding; masses in motion, repeated, reversed, and freeze-framed in dizzy choreographed rhythms.

In each film the emphasis is more on the poetry of the montage itself rather than on any premeditated message, making them easy on the eyes as well as fascinating to ponder.

I had never seen any of Pelechian's work before I saw "The Seasons" and that was crucial. The film is the closest you can get to written poetry and has such a beauty that grabs your every feeling from the beginning. It's pure visual poetry. I saw other films by Artavazd Pelechian after this one and I could be sure the guy is a master at what he does. "The Seasons" with a slow motion of a man going downstream holding a sheep. Strange? Absolutely NOT. You may wonder at first what he meant by showing people sliding in the snow and a horde of sheeps but by the end or maybe after a second time view, you get it. Unfortunately it can't be described with words. Only the soul can understand.