Yerevan on a Wednesday night pulses with life and energy. The grand Republic Square is ablaze with the honking of car horns, hundreds of policemen milling about and the incredibly loud piped-out sounds of Andrea Bocelli singing “Time to Say Goodbye.”
The terraces, automatically sprayed with water mist to keep visitors cool, are packed at midnight, while young folks crowd around kiosks selling cold coffee and ice creams. Indian Yandex delivery drivers whizz by on their e-scooters while Armenian-Americans, perhaps visiting their homeland for the first time, argue about where they should spend the evening. Huge screens display the football, despite Armenia not even competing in the Euros, with friendly locals happy to share their enthusiasm for Arsenal, Liverpool, even Tottenham. The energy is positively palpable.
This energy spills over into the next day’s films, which brim with energy, the former misplaced yet intriguing, the latter directed with a quiet and powerful rage. Metafictional, experimental, playful; both use the reflexivity of metafiction to rewrite the rules of representation.
Read the rest over at Journey Into Cinema!