Epress.am News from Armenia
On Feb. 19 at 7:30 pm, the film Zare (1926) by Soviet Armenian filmmaker Hamo Beknazaryan will be screened at !f Istanbul AFM International Independent Film Festival.
Beknazaryan is considered one of the two founders of Armenian cinema, along with Daniel Dzuni. According to the description on the !f festival website, “April 16, 1923 marks the day that Armenian cinema was born.”
“It has been established that from the 13th century onwards, Kurds have been living in the Lachin region, also known as Red Kurdistan during the Soviet period. Yazidi [alternative spelling: Yezidi] Kurds, particularly from the 18th century onwards, settled here after having to leave Anatolia largely due to religious reasons.
“Zare, one of the most cherished films of Armenian cinema, is a Kurdish story that takes place in a Yazidi village similar to the one that appeared in Kurdish director Hiner Saleem’s acclaimed 2003 film, Vodka Lemon.
“This classic silent film is a tragic love story and is considered the first film in the history of Kurdish cinema to portray the Kurds on screen. The film’s backdrop is the start of the collapse of Russia’s Tsarist regime, with the 1917 revolution just around the corner. Zare, a Kurdish girl, and Seydo, a young shepherd, live in the same village and love each other. But they are faced with problems when the village lord Temur wants to take Zare as his second wife. Zare is a unique and silent gift from Hayastan [Armenia] to Kurdistan and will be celebrating its 85th birthday in Istanbul where the Kurdish artist Tara Jaff will accompany the film on the harp,” writes Director of the London Kurdish Film Festival Mustafa Gündoğdu in the description on the !f festival website.
Beknazaryan was born in 1891 in Yerevan, Armenia. After the 1917 revolution, he went to Tbilisi where he developed a cinema department and started his directing career. In 1925, he shot his first Armenian film called Namus and moved to Armenia. Zare is his second Armenian film. He died in 1965 in Moscow.