Images & Views of Alternative Cinema

Experimentation in cinematic language, social and existential thinking and critical approach towards established images and forms of expression meet every summer in the “alternative” space of Theatro Ena during the event: “Images & Views of Alternative Cinema”.

This festival invites the audience to experience a different and very often unknown aspect of audiovisual creation, which exceeds the standard patterns and trite perspectives.

The festival is organized by the Cultural Services of Ministry of Education and Culture in cooperation with “Theatro Ena,” Brave New Culture and other partners.

The festival’s program is characterized by multiple forms and the fact that the viewer has the unique opportunity to watch films from countries and eras far apart, but with one common denominator: experimentation and exploration of the boundaries of cinema. The filmmakers presented through this festival’s program, these pioneers, these dissenters of the mainstream narrative filmmaking, with their rich vocabulary and themes, develop their own view of the world and human circumstances, thus offering to the people of contemporary societies the antibodies against spiritual leveling.

The rapidly evolving festival, Images & Views of Alternative Cinema started seven years ago with films by the founders of cinema (Lumière, Méliès, Griffith, Porter), continued with the most important representatives from the Russian pioneers and the European avant-garde, European impressionism, surrealism and expressionism without overlooking more radical types of cinema, like the American underground cinema, the Lettrism movement, the British “Free Cinema” documentary movement, the feminist documentar of Kim Longinotto, the German pioneers, the surrealist Man Ray, the tribute to the great Japanese filmmaker Kenji Mizoguchi and others. In the last edition of the festival in June 2008, there was a tribute to the Armenian director Artavazd Peleshian who attended as our honorary guest. Peleshian is described as perhaps the last great innovator in the editing technique and his films are characterized by their idiosyncratic syntax and dense style of elliptic, abstract poetic writing.

The festival “Images & Views of Alternative Cinema” has become an institution and it is particularly popular among the cinephile audience, which year after year supports this important event. An artistic event, which provides the opportunity to benefit from the art of cinema.