Ararat: 14 Views (2007) dir. Don Askarian

A series of controlled improvisations. They focus on the holy Armenian mountain Ararat that is out of reach in Turkey. The filmmaker looks at his mountain as a poet, a dancer, a painter. And of course, eventually also as a filmmaker. Ararat is a holy mountain for Armenians. According to Biblical tradition, Noah saw the first land here again after the Great Flood. So it is difficult for Christian Armenians that the mountain is just over the border in Islamic Turkey. They can only look at it. That is also what Don Askarian does with great dedication and using all his visual inventiveness. Askarian worked for at least five years on this film, which is hard to label. It is not a drama or a documentary and it can’t be put in the tradition of the experimental film, for that he puts up too much resistance to what we now understand as ‘modern’. However, the filmmaker studies his mountain from every conceivable angle, just as the great French painter Cézanne once studied Mont Sainte-Victoire, or like the equally great Japanese print maker Hokusai studied Mount Fuji. Askarian improvises on his fourteen views in such a monitored and imaginative way that a new reality seems to emerge. A reality that seems to float between magic and truth and wants to shirk time and space. The view of Askarian, or maybe rather his vision, of the mountain is deeply rooted in Armenian culture. A culture that had to be fought for in a tragic history. The film makes this tangible too. This beautiful mountain has experienced a lot. Seen a lot. Before and after the Great Flood.