The Color of Armenian Land

In 16 wordless minutes, Mikhail Vartanov creates a visual poem about Armenia’s rich art history and how it’s connected to the Armenian landscape. The colors, textures and soul of these landscapes also form the fiber of the paintings, sculptures, frescoes and khachkars (steles).

Central to the film is the then-90-year-old painter Martiros Saryan, whose work created a bridge between traditional art and the modernism that was gaining momentum in the 1960s. Representing the new generation are two other prominent figures, the painter Minas Avetisyan and the filmmaker Sergei Parajanov, artists who were targeted by the KGB because of their criticism of the Soviet regime.

Their appearance in the film landed Vartanov on the secret service’s blacklist, and for 20 years he was prevented from working. This film, his debut, disappeared from view for decades.