People, Years, Life

People, Years, Life

1990 · 70 min · ★ 7.0 · Documentary

Using images shot in Russia and Armenia from World War I to the 1930s and retrieved from a Soviet film archive, Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi constructed a meditative film about the status of Armenians as a people without a state. Inspired by the diary of Gianikian’s father, People, Years, Life uses rare footage depicting the region’s major historic events: the end of Tsarist Russia, violence in the Caucasus during World War I, the 1918 Armenian exodus from Azerbaijan. Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi’s treatment of the material manipulates the speed of the images, adds color and music, and magnifies various parts of the image, so that the movement of bodies across the frame begins to carry the weight of exile, mourning, dispossession.

Directed by Yervant Gianikian · Written by Yervant Gianikian

Your Rating

Make it a double feature

2h 13m together

People, Years, Life

Balkan Inventory

Both from Yervant Gianikian.

More from Yervant GianikianSee all →

Angela's Diaries. Two Filmmakers.

Angela's Diaries. Two Filmmakers. · 2018

Angela's Diaries. Two Filmmakers.

MovieDocumentary

Every day of her life, Angela kept a diary, filled with words and drawings, in which she recorded public and private matters, meetings, things she had read, everything. Including the account of two trips to Russia (1989-90). The period of the collapse of the USSR. A diary that she had been keeping in small Chinese notebooks, since before Dal Polo all’Equatore (1986), on our uninterrupted work on the violence of the 20th century. From our tours in the United States with the “scented films” of the late seventies to the Anthology Film Archive of New York and the Berkeley Pacific Film Archive...

On the Heights All Is Peace

On the Heights All Is Peace · 1998

On the Heights All Is Peace

MovieDocumentary

Found footage anti-war film comprising film documents of the Austro-Hungarian and Italian army on the Alpine front, and from first generation picture material by war-film pioneer Luca Comerio.

Oh! Man

Oh! Man · 2004

MovieDocumentaryWar

After Prisoners of the war and On the Heights all is Peace, this film concludes Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi's trilogy on the first world war. From the emblem of totalitarianism to individual physical suffering, the directors use this representation of man's rampaging violence to draw up an anatomical inventory of the damaged body and examine the consequences of the conflict on children, from 1919 to 1921. From the deconstruction to the artificial reconstruction of the human body, they try to understand how humanity can forget itself and perpetuate these horrors.

From the Pole to the Equator

From the Pole to the Equator · 1987

From the Pole to the Equator

MovieDocumentary

The title Dal polo all'equatore was first used by the pioneering documentary maker, Luca Comerio, for a compilation film of 1925; it was used again by Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi for their film of 1985. Much of the original has been re-worked: the 'found footage' has been re-shot, slowed down, tinted, and re-edited with a sound track of minimalist composition. As a result, the exotica of colonial travel and sport take on new and sinister meanings. The acts of violence, especially those of hunting, recur in patterns that suggest visually that war is a logical development. A close examination of the work, starting with the opening sequence of a railway journey, explores the centrality of questions of memory and history to this remarkable and influential film.

Balkan Inventory

Balkan Inventory · 2000

Balkan Inventory

MovieDocumentary

Comprised of images shot by amateur photographers and German soldiers in the Balkans from the twenties through the forties, BALKAN INVENTORY was begun by Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi in response to the tragedy unfolding in the former Yugoslavia.

Images of the Orient - "Vandalic Tourism"

Images of the Orient - "Vandalic Tourism" · 2001

Images of the Orient - "Vandalic Tourism"

MovieDocumentary

Working from archives of private film footage from a trip to India by the upper class of the late 1920s, a period of strong anti-colonial outbreak, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi deconstruct the images and analyze the attitude and behavior of Westerners in the East.

Barbaric Land

Barbaric Land · 2013

MovieDramaDocumentary

Milan-based duo Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi create an astonishing work of militant poetry with this found-footage chronicle of Mussolini's brutal invasion of Ethiopia.

Electric Fragments No. 4 - Asia

Electric Fragments No. 4 - Asia · 2005

Electric Fragments No. 4 - Asia

Criminal Animals

Criminal Animals · 1994

Criminal Animals

MovieDocumentary

In this filmic comment on Fascist ideology - which uses footage from the recently discovered archives of Luca Comerio - invisible hands push captive animals to fight among themselves.

Film perduto

Film perduto · 2008

Io ricordo

Io ricordo · 1997

The memoirs of Raphael Gianikian, Yervant’s father, who survived the 1915 Armenian genocide in eastern Turkey.

Aria

Primarily constructed from scientific films about the atmosphere from the turn of the last century.

African Diary

African Diary · 1994

MovieDocumentary

African Diary uses footage from a filmed personal diary shot in Algeria by an anonymous Frenchman between 1927-1936. Here, they reprise his cinematic jottings as he followed in the footsteps of the 19th century Orientalists like Flaubert.

Vladimir Propp- Profumo di lupo

Vladimir Propp- Profumo di lupo · 1975

Vladimir Propp- Profumo di lupo

MovieDocumentary

Erat Sora

Erat Sora · 1975

Trasparenze

Trasparenze · 1998

Decaying nitrate film: cinema as an incendiary explosive bomb of memory.

More Like This

Couldn't load this row right now.

Rate this film

Your ratings make Midnight smarter