The Bear

A tableaux of poetry and images exploring the historical trauma, identity, and collective memory of the Armenian people centered on an Armenian filmmaker exiled in Berlin.

The film is dedicated to the Armenian monk and genius composer Komitas, and the 2 million victims on his people in Turkey in 1915. The final 20 years of Komitas life were spent in various mental hospitals. The destiny of Komitas? This is the magic beauty of Armenian culture and the abhorrent brutality of Armenian history. A cultural and artistic world that was slaughtered with a curved knife. A humanity that doggedly advances towards an apocalyptic catastrophe, that does not recognize its own original purpose, eradicates its own memory, its final roots.

“Drawing on archival footage, fragments of interviews, and scenes from his films, this newly constructed portrait of Sergey Paradjanov was composed by the highly accomplished Armenian director Don Askarian (Komitas, Avetik). According to the director's synopsis: "The year is 1989. The place is the film festival in Rotterdam. Farewell at the Hilton Hotel. And Paradjanov says, ‘Help me make Confession’. I answer, ‘As a child of two fathers, the film will be born a bastard’."

In Holland, a group of Armenian terrorists have swung into action, murdering a Turkish intelligence agent and holding his son for ransom. As the battle of wits between the terrorists and the Dutch police plays itself out, an author from Armenia living in Rotterdam finds himself following the events as he thinks back on his life in his homeland, indulging in fantasies about his past, his future, and his obsessions.

This beautiful mountain saw a lot before and after the great flood.

Exercise in death - look at the terrible face of a father. To hear his hoarseness is the preparation for death.