Article

Name: Artavazd Pelechian’s “Montage-at-a-Distance” in Semiotic Perspective (By the Example Director’s Theoretical Essays)

Authors: Tigran S. Simyan

Yerevan State University, Yerevan, Armenia

Abstract:

The article explores the renowned Armenian documentary filmmaker Artavazd Pelechian (born 1938), whose acclaim surged in 1988, marking the end of the Soviet era, when many figures of Armenian culture became peripatetic. Through a semiotic lens and metalanguage, the article delves into the core elements of “Montage-at-a-Distance,” examining the interplay between image and sound/music, and the generative potential inherent in the director’s cinematic language. It particularly emphasizes a distinct montage language, founded not on coupling, docking, and splicing film frames (akin to Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein), but on decollage, influenced by Marcel Merien’s principle. Pelechian employs a theory of distance to deconstruct the narrative, thus embedding the emotional depth of documentaries. His “Montage-at-a-Distance” aligns typologically with T.S. Eliot’s theory of personalized poetry and emotion. A theory of distance catalyzes for the viewer's intellectual engagement, as it eliminates everything deemed “superfluous” and “noise” (in a semiotic context) from the visual series. The author’s message is dispersed throughout the film text and, at the structural and pragmatic level, is crafted into a “frame” structure, assembling a cinematic “picture” within a frame.

Keywords: montage-at-a-distance, theory of distance, semiotics of cinema, Artavazd Pelechian, Soviet documentary cinema, poetic cinema

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