ELINA YERKANYAN

6 min read

The visual language of “Still in those deserts”- a conceptual short film.

She speaks with the audience with her neat handwriting, contemplative gaze, free-verse poem lines, old photographs, and the satellite images of hundreds of Armenian churches, desecrated during the Genocide.

The heroine of the conceptual short semi-documentary “Still in those deserts”, Arin, is the “silent” narrator who passes the viewer through the tragic pages of Armenian history, questioning the connection between the Armenian Genocide, the 2020 Artsakh war, and the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh Armenians.

Created on the occasion of the 110th anniversary of the commemoration of the Armenian Genocide by director and scriptwriter, Elina Yerkanyan, together with Karen Margaryan (creative producer, co-director), Vahan Zatikyan (second director), “Still in those deserts” explores the themes of Armenian Genocide trauma, Armenian identity, and collective memory. The semi-documentary channels the perspective of genocide, heritage, memory, loss, and belonging within modern-day Armenians through a single character’s story and visualises trauma through unconventional imagery and conceptual scenes, giving form to the intangible and the unspeakable.

The language of the film includes several media that each play their unique role in the character’s communication. Animation serves as the tool connecting the real world with the heroine’s imagination - the brim between her mind’s journal and the canvas of reality. So do the pictures, from archival photographs to documentary images from present-day life. The latter bridges the story of Arin’s great-grandmother with her own, drawing parallels between the two acts of violence one hundred years apart from each other. The dance performance and the overall body language enable the heroine to express pain and struggle beyond just words, letting her speak with her whole body. And the text, which comes in the form of inner monologues, puts all these elements in context, weaving them together to create Arin’s unique and personal stream of consciousness.

This film was created by a group of young filmmakers driven by passion and determination to bring this story to the hearts of viewers. For us, it is more than just a short film — it is an attempt to convey the pain, memory, and hope of an entire nation through imagery and emotion.

Arin’s story becomes a universal symbol for those who have been carrying the scars of tragedy through the ages, reminding the world that we must never forget, as history can be repeated.