Et Cetera

Crowns worn by monarchs reveal stories of hierarchy and power, providing insight not only to those who wore them, but the strata to which they belonged. Margarita Ghazaryan looks at the story of the royal crowns of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia.

Art can be an effective tool of conflict transformation impacting societal attitudes and perceptions by producing a cathartic effect on both artists and audiences, writes Anna Kamay.

The directors of the documentary “5 Dreamers and a Horse” manage to think outside of genre limitations, and to blend the elements of magical realism and cinéma vérité to create a strange fairy tale that resembles the one in which we all live.

Nune Hakhverdyan reviews the Armenian production of “The Miracle Worker” staged by the Gyumri Drama Theater and Yerevan’s Hamazkayin Theater about the life of Helen Keller, and examines the relationship between parent and child.

In Armenia, there are few exhibitions outside of the traditional art space environment, but at the same time, one can notice distinctive new trends emerging in recent years.

Michael Goorjian’s feature film “Amerikatsi” succeeded in infusing a sentimental and “positivist” tone inherent to Hollywood cinema within an Armenian reality, writes film critic Sona Karapoghosyan.

Cemeteries serve as a reflection of societal beliefs, values and ideas and impact how we live and develop our identities; there we find every human manifestation, from the subtlest to the crudest.

Garegin Papoyan’s film “Bon Voyage” manages to recreate a Kafkaesque world in the form of the Stepanakert Airport, where people follow a seemingly unreasonable system, and continue to do their work with incredible persistence, without questioning its meaning.

Even though a collectivist and masculine culture is predominant in Armenia, it’s often challenged by smaller segments of the society that are proponents of individualistic values and/or advocate gender equality.

The inclusion of two conflicting Armenian artists from different eras on a prestigious platform of global contemporary art reveals the need to fundamentally reconsider and rethink the Armenian artistic heritage of the recent past.