Zangezur and the Music of Aram Khachaturian

Hamo Bek-Nazaryan is known as the father of Armenian cinema — he stands with Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Alexander Dovzhenko in the history of film. He was a popular actor in in the history of film. He was a popular actor in prerevolutionary Russian film as well as a founder of the Hayfilm (Armenfilm) studio in Yerevan. His vivid late 1930s sound film Zangezur is a chronicle of the 1920s civil war in Armenia, depicting efforts by the Bolsheviks in the mountainous Zangezur region to defeat the Dashnaks, the region’s counterrevolutionary rulers. Zangezur was a trendsetter for the Armenian revolutionary drama, and the soundtrack by Aram Khachaturian features folkloric songs, a march, and two beautifully lyrical interludes. (Hamo Bek-Nazaryan, 1938, subtitles, 89 minutes)