*This text was written and published in 2015 for Chemodan No. 6, a Japanese website specializing in Russian culture, but since it is no longer available, I have decided to post it here at short notice. (AI translation)

When Artavazd Pelechian states that in Distance=Montage he "creates reverse time" in the midst of a circular motion from movement to absence, or from absence to movement, and we, the audience, experience this, it seems to me that this "reverse time" is not something that anyone can achieve with a certain technique, but rather, even when he describes in detail how he observes, films, and assembles the movement in reality and found footage to embody that experience of reverse time—composing an entire film—and how he does so, even after a detailed explanation of how he does it, there remains a mysterious quality that is difficult to immediately imagine. Therefore, rather than pretending to uncover such secrets, this text will focus on describing the feeling of being in the midst of not only the movement that Pelechian's films represent, but also the movements of other filmmakers comparable to his. It will also need to consider the era and circumstances in which these films were made, the time when Japanese audiences encountered Pelechian's great works—a period that had to wait until the 1995 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a particularly wonderful time for me to encounter outstanding Soviet filmmakers—and even the current visual landscape surrounding us. However, if, as he himself stated in an interview, "films are born spontaneously, and I discover them" (I recently heard the same words from Jean-Claude Rousseau, the best contemporary french director), then following his example, it would be best to begin by describing the movement of his works, and to observe and listen to what emerges from this.

From the distant background of the screen, which is now only vaguely white due to the aging film, the movements of two types of soldiers running horizontally down a mountain appear alternately and are repeated in a unique rhythm, but in reality, the movement is not a complete repetition, and there are moments when we are seized by the feeling that time is moving back and forth. This then transitions to a new circular movement created by the combination of a scene where a man falls from his horse and the horse collapses to its knees, a child rolling on an ice rink, and a woman-like figure falling, and in this instant we find the "returning time" that can only be experienced in Pelechian's films. The originality of The Beginning(1967) lies not only in this unlikely combination of a horse falling and a spinning ice rink, but also in the fact that the origin of all the elements that create this series of movements, rhythm, and sensation is unknown. This work, a project for the 50th anniversary of the revolution, far exceeds the imagination of the audience before they see it, in the sense that movement itself conveys a unique sense of time. The progression from piano to string instruments joining a repetitive melody, developing into orchestration, and then disappearing in a stop-motion effect with the sound of a gunshot, creates a "magnetic field" that captivates the audience and generates a sense of "reverse time." This is the complete opposite of how later music videos, due to their subservience to music, failed to last; it's a glorious moment in cinema where the magnetic fields of each autonomous movement create a unique environment.

Or consider the wonderful scene in The Four Seasons (1975) where the sheep try to escape the tunnel. Sometimes the camera is positioned at the height of the sheep's backs, sometimes it moves into the flock and becomes engulfed in it, and the audience, too, is caught up in the movement, becoming one with the herd. The handheld camera, trapped in the darkness of the tunnel, moves back and forth amidst the screen-filling flock and the scattering of bright car headlights, bringing to life that moment of "beginning." Together with the bleating of the sheep and the clamor of car horns, it forms a "magnetic field," and we experience a time that feels as if we are trapped in the tunnel forever, even though it was only temporary. This is the time of light in darkness that is repeated in the final tunnel of The End (1993) along with the movement of the train, and it connects to the sense of outer space illuminated by light, without time or direction, in Our Century (1982). Furthermore, the time of the flock of sheep in The Four Seasons is like the time created by the movement of the herd of wild animals sprinting in response to the gunshots in his previous work, The Inhabitants(1970). The movement of the camera approaching the subject erases the individual contours, transforming it into the movement of particles, and becoming a time that can be experienced through the movement of purified energy. Here again, a fundamental difference emerges between Pelechian's films and ordinary documentary films dealing with the natural environment that rely solely on the beauty of the subject or explain its ugliness through narration. Those documentary films, like the music videos mentioned earlier, have a master-servant relationship among their constituent elements, merely manipulating the audience without ever taking them outside of it.

Looking back, the 1990s, when Artavazd Pelechian was invited to Japan's Yamagata Film Festival, was a time of great encounters for Japanese audiences, who were accustomed to Western cinema, with the works of filmmakers who were working on "another time" in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Tarkovsky and Parajanov, introduced to Japan in the 1960s, presented Japanese audiences with the "another time" that could be experienced in film through their maddeningly slow tracking shots and enigmatic, virtuosic gestures. Western filmmakers after the advent of sound films also offered similar opportunities, including Dreyer, Wells, Italian Neorealism, Bergman (especially Persona(1966)), important works of the French New Wave, and especially Alain Resnais' films that give the impression of stillness even though they are actually constantly moving (*1), and Jacques Rivette's films that construct a single scene as if it were a complete record of an act in a play. The issue of time had been raised by people like Andy Warhol and Michael Snow, who attempted to directly capture time. Furthermore, it is certain that the issue of time in cinema had already been raised for Japanese audiences in earlier Japanese cinema by people like Mizoguchi, Ozu, and Kurosawa. The tracking shots and the way time passes by so quickly in Kenji Mizoguchi's The Life of Oharu (1952), Ugetsu Monogatari (1953), and Sansho Dayu (1954), the way time seems to never pass with the people sitting still on the ground in Akira Kurosawa's The Idiot (1951) and The Lower Depths (1957), and especially Yasujiro Ozu's use of time to bring things, movement, life and death to the surface, all resonated with the audience's everyday lives. While approaching the subject, he simultaneously raised the issue of fiction as a distinct form of time. For example, the moment the father falls ill in Ozu's There Was a Father (1942) is encompassed within a series of everyday scenes depicting the father and son getting dressed one morning, with the son relaxing in another room. Also, in the commuting scene in Early Spring (1956), the number of people walking towards the station increases with each change in the frame. Even before Noel Birch coined the term "pillow shot" for the vase in Late Spring(1952), he was already addressing the issue of time in film where things and movements suddenly appear while maintaining a certain rhythm. Furthermore, from the 1960s onward, people from diverse genres such as Seijun Suzuki, Yoshishige Yoshida, Toshio Matsumoto, and Atsushi Yamatoya explored the concept of time. There was also an approach to the space in between. Because of this work on time in Japanese cinema, it cannot be said that Japanese audiences lacked the foundation to engage with films that presented a different kind of time, made by filmmakers around the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. I myself have encountered not only Pelechian, but also Alexander Sokurov (who, in a previous interview with me, described the time in his films as "time progressing in a spiral"*2), Alexander Rekviashvili, Alexander Kaidanovski, early Andrei Chernykh, Svetlana Proskurina, Yevgeny Yufit, and the older Marlen Khutsiev's Infinity (Бесконечность). It's no coincidence that I'm fascinated by the work of filmmakers like 1991 on time. Their films prioritized the sensibility of depicting movement and time over narrative, information, or meaning. And this is crucial, especially from a 21st-century audiovisual perspective, where even ordinary people uninterested in film can use and be influenced by images in their daily lives.

But what's particularly important with Pelechian is that, in found-footage films, after Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Marie Straub & Daniel Huillet,New german filmmakers who emerged, such as Hartmut Bitomsky and Harun Farocki, who exposed and criticized the mechanisms of audience manipulation through images, or Cuban filmmakers like Santiago Álvarez, who raised important movements beyond the context of propaganda films, he was able to unleash the power inherent in seemingly unremarkable footage through his "montage of distance." Santiago Álvarez' most powerful early short film, for example, 79 Springtimes of Ho Chi Minh(1969), news footage of the Vietnam War, torn vertically, plays continuously amidst machine gun fire and explosions, eventually shifting and freezing before being illuminated by the heat of the projector's light and catching fire. This technique of projecting and re-filming vertically torn film is also seen in, for example, Owen Land's Film in Which There Appear Sprocket Holes, Edge Lettering, Dirt Particles and etc.(1966). The film exposes the physical existence of film, and at the same time, the news footage used is itself a propaganda medium for war, and by tearing the film, it seems to deny the manipulation by the media. However, the sequence of dazzling images of light and explosions itself becomes audiovisual music that works on the eyes and ears of the audience. If there is any point in which Alvarez's film should be compared to Pelechian's film, as Godard stated, it is in this sense of audiovisual musicality. Alvarez's Now! (1965) is made up of a song by Lena Horne and images of racial discrimination against Black people in America and the riots against it, and indeed, the rhythm of the montage and stop motion are not subordinate to the rhythm of the singing voice as in a music video. However, if we compare, for example, the scene of people evacuating from a flood in Alvarez's Ciclon (1963) with the scene of people trying to push a car stuck in the rain in Pelechian's The Four Seasons upon closer examination, the audience will notice a striking difference. While the camera in Tornado captures movement without deviating from the information that can be expressed in words—"people fleeing"—the screen in The Four Seasons gradually narrows its focus to the intense interplay of light and shadow illuminating the rain, which seems to obstruct the depiction of people's movements. The percussive sounds in the soundtrack also seem to accelerate this narrowing.

Each of these movements might not have attracted the audience's attention as a subject if it hadn't been filmed. Pelechian's films, through the "montage of distance," bring a powerful energy from this movement to the audience. The interplay of the antelope's leaps and the dust kicked up by its kicking legs in The Inhabitants, and the roar of the elephant, transcends the recognition of each animal's existence, playing a pure movement. Therefore, it has nothing to do with being a mere animal documentary. In Pelechian's films, movement that leaves information behind is always crucial. Therefore, compared to Alvarez's Hanoi... Opening of Hanoi, Tuesday the 13th(1968), it's pointless to compare the scene where a volcanic eruption intertwines with the birth of a person or cow with Pelechian's birth-themed film Life (1992), which doesn't actually film the vagina or childbirth itself. This is something we can only say in the 21st century, when an overwhelming amount of video is available online via the internet. Here, the overall effect of Pelechian's film—making the invisible energy visible—is far more important than seeing images of female genitalia. That's why the woman's face shakes like an earthquake, and you can hear her heartbeat. How does the film progress towards making the audience perceive the very energy of birth itself? The film is, in Pelechian's own words from a past interview, an "organism," and that's why the newborn baby, enveloped in shimmering droplets of water, ascends towards the heavens. It's much like the rocket launching from Earth into space in his previous film, Our Century, where the Earth appears as something brimming with pulsating energy.

So what about the works of Jean-Luc Godard, who was none other than the first person to compare Pelechian to Alvarez (*3)? In particular, the influence of Pelechian can be strongly felt in his short films that preceded his famous Histoire(s) du cinéma series, such as Puissance de la parole (1988) and On s’est tous défilé (1988). Luc Moullet calls "Godard's masterpiece, his greatest video work, a continuation of Abel Gance's experiment with Napoleon," and Puissance de la parole is composed of scenes in which actors perform excerpts from James M. Cain's novel The Postman Always Rings Twice and a dialogue text by Edgar Allan Poe, with sounds sometimes separated and heard in other scenes. Of all the scenes, the most striking is probably the section towards the end where the images intensely intertwine. It's a juxtaposition of excerpts from Haroun Tazieff's volcanic eruption scenes and the frequent shots of flowing rivers that appear from the middle of the film onwards, all while the music of Richard Strauss, Leonard Cohen, and Bob Dylan plays simultaneously. And as for On s’est tous défilé , which features footage of a Marithé & François Girbaud fashion show, street scenes, and paintings, and a soundscape where music by Arthur Honegger, Sonny Rollins, Mozart, and Barbra Streisand plays simultaneously or alternates, while Godard himself recites a passage from Stéphane Mallarmé's Album de vers et de prose, are far more suitable for comparing than The Origin of the 21st Century (L'Origine du XXIème siècle) (2001), in which Godard himself later directly quotes Pelechian's We and The Beginning, or the first part of Our Music (Notre musique) (2004), which consists of fragments from various war films and newsreels.

Ultimately, the biggest difference between the two is, once again, "time." While Pelechian's time returns through a cyclical movement, Godard's time never returns. And even when two or more fragments intensely intersect and overlap, it is clear what the two or more images represent. Similarly, sounds and voices heard simultaneously are clearly audible. They exist in parallel, progressing lines, streams. Like certain pieces of John Cage's music or Ornette Coleman's jazz, they are a bundle of parallel lines where none of the elements that make up the piece become the background, perhaps because, as André Bazin said in France, quoting Jean Cocteau, "film captures death in the present moment." In Godard's King Lear (1988), we see a reversed image of "the hand planting the petals" as an homage to Cocteau, but even this can be recognized as a reversed image, unlike Pelechian's case. On the contrary, Godard sandwiches it between a close-up of the protagonist's face and a black screen, inviting analysis from the audience. The philosopher Gilles Deleuze likened Alain Robbe-Grillet's film l'homme qui ment (1968), with its images of characters lying to each other and the voices narrating off-screen, to the theory of parallel universes. However, this is a novelistic narrative, and in Godard's case, as with Pelechian, it could be described as an audiovisual, musical parallel universe. But this is a one-time occurrence; even though images of a volcanic eruption and a river are repeatedly superimposed at the end of Puissance de la parole, there is no sense of the water flowing or the flames erupting returning. In contrast, in the final section of We, when the camera circling the crowd and the explosions intertwine, and hymns and percussion music play simultaneously, it gives the impression that time is constantly reversing.

Let's compare the section near the end of Pelechian's Our Century, where close-ups of astronauts putting on their helmets are repeated and interspersed with white screens and explosion sounds, with the section near the end of Godard's On s’est tous défilé , where fashion show models run in a circle and screens with the words "Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Société (society)" written in black letters on a white background rapidly change and flash. The slow-motion close-ups in Our Century seem to be trying to replenish energy through repetition. Pelechian himself said that the "montage of distance" generates greater power the farther the fragments being joined together are. Just as the explosions of galaxies hundreds of millions of light-years away at the edge of the universe that we can currently observe generate unimaginable energy. That is why Pelechian connects images of volcanic eruptions to the movements of the astronauts, reversing time. And by connecting explosion after explosion, and creating a pulsating rhythm, it seems to reverse from macro to micro. On the other hand, in Godard's film, when models run in a circle in slow motion, there is a circular motion similar to that of Pelechian, but there is no return of time. At the same time, it evokes Matisse's painting The Dance, and those familiar with Godard's films will know that the staging of placing someone in the center and having others run around them is a long-standing motif, symbolizing the lightness that represents the youthfulness of the Nouvelle Vague. The interplay of white space further enhances this lightness. Furthermore, the method of extracting painting from real-world movement seems closer to Parajanov's witty collages than to Pelechian's. Therefore, following Pelechian's Beginning, if you focus your eyes and ears on the details of the film's movement, approaching the crowd until you can see people's faces, you will be struck by how different it is, and more than that, the originality of Pelechian's "reverse time" becomes clear.

Japanese audiences who encountered Pelechian and his films in 1995 have spent nearly 20 years since then, and it can be said that the environment surrounding film has changed dramatically during that time. We now live in an age where anyone can watch any kind of film on the web via DVD or the internet, without even going to a movie theater. Lumière, Griffith, Flaherty, Eisenstein, Vertov are all there, and anyone can see masterpieces of film history mixed in with ordinary everyday footage, wars, accidents, and disasters. Furthermore, anyone can create works using digital video cameras or mobile phone video recording. In this age of mass consumption of a flood of images that people all over the world are swallowed up and forget every day, Pelechian's films seem to shine with a unique brilliance even now, far beyond the time they were made. This is because, in the age of sound films, there were very few filmmakers who possessed a strong and unique theory of connecting image and sound. And in the modern age of audiovisuals, this can now be considered a fundamental theory for living. For example, Pelechian's words from an interview—"It happens when one particle goes away into absence and another particle comes into existence. That's how I see the world. It's not made up only of what we see with our eyes. The world is composed of visible and invisible things, which revolve in a circle"—can be addressed as a problem of general thinking: the reason many people are manipulated by mediocre images and mass media is that they ignore this great movement of going away into absence and coming into existence, which is why many problems remain unresolved. People threatened by present images fail to pay attention to the "three movements of time, space, and reality," but by watching films composed of these three elements, they can be liberated and gain a great alternative idea. That is precisely the great freedom that Pelechian spoke of.

(*1) “Rules of the Game,” an interview with Alain Resnais and Alan Ayckbourn by Jonathan Romney, Sight and Sound, September 1994

(*2) An interview with Sokurov by the author, published in the late March 1996 issue of Kinema Junpo, however, the answers themselves have not been published.

(*3)Before Babel:FILM CONVERSATION BETWEEN ARTAVAZD PELESHIAN AND JEAN-LUC GODARD

All other statements by Pelechian himself are from an interview conducted by the author at the 1995 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival.