From never picking up the camera, to winning the prestigious top prize at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam with debut feature 1489. Already on the surface level, the story of Armenian director Shoghakat Vardanyan is remarkable. What cuts even deeper is the personal narrative of a sister struggling with the disappearance of her younger brother at the front, in the armed conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh. Through the immediacy of Vardanyan’s images, this conflict transforms into the story of a family processing with the raw grief of losing a lost one and coping with catastrophe.
Since this is your debut film, and you didn’t consider yourself a director before, could you say that you felt forced by the situation to pick up the camera and make cinema out of this story?
I never studied filmmaking, and I didn't plan to become a filmmaker either. I was a professional pianist. I always loved cinema, though, but that wasn’t enough to call myself a filmmaker. But, yes, because all of what happened, it's like the film came to me. I simply didn't know what else to do. We were trying to find my brother, or at least receive news about him, and it didn't succeed. There were also some places that I’d better not go to, so my father had to go there, for example, to meet people from the army. They could talk more easily to him than to me, so I didn't really know what to do. That’s why I just started filming.
You see some footage of home video footage from before your brother was in the army and went missing. Did the camera play a big role in your household?
There were some moments that I made some short videos, but that is just like everyone might do. So, during birthdays or New Year or whatever. I never thought that they can be useful for something else, except for just a memory to have recorded and sometimes look at. So, my archive isn’t that big, because I wasn't filming that much.
I can imagine it must have been very emotionally intense then, to suddenly pick up the camera. Was it hard for you to yourself and your family, or did it give you some sort of comfort or relief?
No, it wasn't giving comfort. Actually, it did the opposite. It was making my life, which was already very restless, even more stressful. If I wouldn’t have filmed them, I probably also wouldn’t have seen these heave moments, these emotional things my parents were going through. However, because I did film them, I could see all of those things. So that was actually very hard. Basically, I needed to do two things at the same time. For my parents, I was still their daughter, even when I was behind the camera. They’re talking with me and need my support. I can’t stop being a daughter or a sister during the process of filming. In this position, I needed to make all of these decisions that I didn’t know how to take. There were a lot of things I didn’t know about this process of grief, so I just needed to follow my feelings. The same can be said about the filmmaking. I never filmed before, and didn’t know what to do, but my brain was simply burning. I needed to make fast decisions: where to turn the camera, how to compose the frame, how to move, how not to move, how to feel the rhythm of reality. Basically, every night, before I was going to sleep, I was thinking about how I’d never be able to keep filming the next day. I was crying a lot back then. And yet, on the morning after, I got up and kept on filming.
At certain moments you consciously point the camera towards yourself. These are often moments of anguish and huge despair. A very powerful image is, of course, the one where you have cut your hair and stand next to a photo of your brother, revealing this strong resemblance between you too. Can you bring us into the emotional space of those moments?
Actually, this scene with my head shaved is very interesting for me. When the audience watches that part, they, indeed, can see how much I look like my brother. The interesting thing for me is that I was also finding that out in that scene. When I turned the camera to myself, I could catch that image, and see it too. About the choice of filming myself, it didn’t feel like I needed an important reason for doing that. The film was taking me along basically, telling me what to film, what not to film. The rest happened obviously in the editing, the most important part.
By making a film that is so incredibly personal and specific, the material also transforms into something more universal. Your family and your brother become a kind of symbols that are bigger than just what has happened in Artsakh. How do you relate to the fact that your personal story becomes symbolic in some sense as well?
Actually, there was a moment where I needed to make a very, very hard decision for me as a sister, in order to make this film universal. An earlier rough cut of the film finished with archival footage of my brother playing the piano. It was at a concert he played before he went into the army. I was doubting for a long time, for years even, if that footage should be there. So, I deleted it, and quickly understood that if I cut it like this, the story will become about every human being who is going through war. That was a really tough decision. And thankfully, in that decision, and in that moment, I wasn't alone. There were people I could talk with about the film, helping me think about this, some of the most important ones being Marina Razbejkina and Davit Stepanyan.
It's interesting that you mention not being alone. Despite the sadness, 1489 also shows the solidarity and sense of community that rallies behind you. Did you feel that as well?
Yes and no. There were a lot of people supporting me even from the beginning when I started filming this. One of them is Ani Hovhannisyan, who was the director of the school where I was studying journalism. She saw what I was going through and helped me as a friend. She was and still is with me from the beginning up until the very end of the film. She even helped my parents when I needed to do something for them, but couldn’t do it alone. And yet, even if they somehow understand, they can never truly know what you go through, because it’s so based on my own experiences. Nonetheless, it was very important to have these people that could kick me into action, when I was unable to move anymore. Or just to get the chance to talk to someone and cry while they listen. It is very, very important. In that sense, yes, I wasn't alone. However, making this film was lonely work. Very, very lonely work.
It must have been both strange and fantastic to be programmed at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and winning the prestigious top prize.
Just recently, I was talking with one of my friends who was there during the process of filming. Sometimes he remembers scenes that happened that I don’t even remember anymore — snapshots of how I was feeling, those kinds of things. And we were talking about after having finished the film, I was so happy that I could let it go. Because at the very end, at this final stage of the process when you’re doing all of these technical things, I was practically crawling. I wasn’t able to walk with this film anymore. So, I was happy, with the feeling like I already owned the world. Then IDFA took the film. First of all, I didn’t even realize how big of a festival it was when I sent in the film, but I sent it, they took it, and I was very happy. I couldn’t wish for anything more. Then, when the film won, I felt like I was Armenia standing on that stage and being seen by the world. With people finally seeing it, seeing the struggle. Long after, I needed time to properly understand what had happened. People were asking me: ‘do you understand what you’ve done? Do you understand what this prize is?’ Only then it started to dawn on me. However, to this day I don’t think I truly understand. It all just seems so surreal to me.
Hugo Emmerzael
Since this is your debut film, and you didn’t consider yourself a director before, could you say that you felt forced by the situation to pick up the camera and make cinema out of this story?
I never studied filmmaking, and I didn't plan to become a filmmaker either. I was a professional pianist. I always loved cinema, though, but that wasn’t enough to call myself a filmmaker. But, yes, because all of what happened, it's like the film came to me. I simply didn't know what else to do. We were trying to find my brother, or at least receive news about him, and it didn't succeed. There were also some places that I’d better not go to, so my father had to go there, for example, to meet people from the army. They could talk more easily to him than to me, so I didn't really know what to do. That’s why I just started filming.
You see some footage of home video footage from before your brother was in the army and went missing. Did the camera play a big role in your household?
There were some moments that I made some short videos, but that is just like everyone might do. So, during birthdays or New Year or whatever. I never thought that they can be useful for something else, except for just a memory to have recorded and sometimes look at. So, my archive isn’t that big, because I wasn't filming that much.
I can imagine it must have been very emotionally intense then, to suddenly pick up the camera. Was it hard for you to yourself and your family, or did it give you some sort of comfort or relief?
No, it wasn't giving comfort. Actually, it did the opposite. It was making my life, which was already very restless, even more stressful. If I wouldn’t have filmed them, I probably also wouldn’t have seen these heave moments, these emotional things my parents were going through. However, because I did film them, I could see all of those things. So that was actually very hard. Basically, I needed to do two things at the same time. For my parents, I was still their daughter, even when I was behind the camera. They’re talking with me and need my support. I can’t stop being a daughter or a sister during the process of filming. In this position, I needed to make all of these decisions that I didn’t know how to take. There were a lot of things I didn’t know about this process of grief, so I just needed to follow my feelings. The same can be said about the filmmaking. I never filmed before, and didn’t know what to do, but my brain was simply burning. I needed to make fast decisions: where to turn the camera, how to compose the frame, how to move, how not to move, how to feel the rhythm of reality. Basically, every night, before I was going to sleep, I was thinking about how I’d never be able to keep filming the next day. I was crying a lot back then. And yet, on the morning after, I got up and kept on filming.
At certain moments you consciously point the camera towards yourself. These are often moments of anguish and huge despair. A very powerful image is, of course, the one where you have cut your hair and stand next to a photo of your brother, revealing this strong resemblance between you too. Can you bring us into the emotional space of those moments?
Actually, this scene with my head shaved is very interesting for me. When the audience watches that part, they, indeed, can see how much I look like my brother. The interesting thing for me is that I was also finding that out in that scene. When I turned the camera to myself, I could catch that image, and see it too. About the choice of filming myself, it didn’t feel like I needed an important reason for doing that. The film was taking me along basically, telling me what to film, what not to film. The rest happened obviously in the editing, the most important part.
By making a film that is so incredibly personal and specific, the material also transforms into something more universal. Your family and your brother become a kind of symbols that are bigger than just what has happened in Artsakh. How do you relate to the fact that your personal story becomes symbolic in some sense as well?
Actually, there was a moment where I needed to make a very, very hard decision for me as a sister, in order to make this film universal. An earlier rough cut of the film finished with archival footage of my brother playing the piano. It was at a concert he played before he went into the army. I was doubting for a long time, for years even, if that footage should be there. So, I deleted it, and quickly understood that if I cut it like this, the story will become about every human being who is going through war. That was a really tough decision. And thankfully, in that decision, and in that moment, I wasn't alone. There were people I could talk with about the film, helping me think about this, some of the most important ones being Marina Razbejkina and Davit Stepanyan.
It's interesting that you mention not being alone. Despite the sadness, 1489 also shows the solidarity and sense of community that rallies behind you. Did you feel that as well?
Yes and no. There were a lot of people supporting me even from the beginning when I started filming this. One of them is Ani Hovhannisyan, who was the director of the school where I was studying journalism. She saw what I was going through and helped me as a friend. She was and still is with me from the beginning up until the very end of the film. She even helped my parents when I needed to do something for them, but couldn’t do it alone. And yet, even if they somehow understand, they can never truly know what you go through, because it’s so based on my own experiences. Nonetheless, it was very important to have these people that could kick me into action, when I was unable to move anymore. Or just to get the chance to talk to someone and cry while they listen. It is very, very important. In that sense, yes, I wasn't alone. However, making this film was lonely work. Very, very lonely work.
It must have been both strange and fantastic to be programmed at International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and winning the prestigious top prize.
Just recently, I was talking with one of my friends who was there during the process of filming. Sometimes he remembers scenes that happened that I don’t even remember anymore — snapshots of how I was feeling, those kinds of things. And we were talking about after having finished the film, I was so happy that I could let it go. Because at the very end, at this final stage of the process when you’re doing all of these technical things, I was practically crawling. I wasn’t able to walk with this film anymore. So, I was happy, with the feeling like I already owned the world. Then IDFA took the film. First of all, I didn’t even realize how big of a festival it was when I sent in the film, but I sent it, they took it, and I was very happy. I couldn’t wish for anything more. Then, when the film won, I felt like I was Armenia standing on that stage and being seen by the world. With people finally seeing it, seeing the struggle. Long after, I needed time to properly understand what had happened. People were asking me: ‘do you understand what you’ve done? Do you understand what this prize is?’ Only then it started to dawn on me. However, to this day I don’t think I truly understand. It all just seems so surreal to me.
Hugo Emmerzael