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[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Peleshian has called his method "distance montage." Unlike Eisenstein's montage, which is "linear, like a chain," distance montage, Peleshian has explained,
creates a magnetic field around the film. It's like when a light is turned on and light is generated around the lamp. ... Sometimes I don't call my method "montage." I'm involved in a process of creating unity. In a sense I've eliminated montage: by creating the film through montage, I have destroyed montage. In the totality, in the wholeness of one of my films, there is no montage, no collision, so as a result montage has been destroyed. In Eisenstein every element means something. For me the individual fragments don't mean anything anymore. Only the whole film has the meaning. ... Sound and image cross each other, intersect each other, switch, change territories. The sound enters the territory of the picture and the image enters the territory of the sound. You start to see the sound and you hear the picture. ... I would want to say that whereas Eisenstein saw editing as a means to get from here to there, I see editing as a means for seeing where we are.*
In distance montage, successive shots may or may not be directly related, and even when they are, their relationships represent only part of their significance. Certain shots, even short sequences, as well as discrete passages of music and isolated sound effects, are repeated multiple times, each time in a different context. As the film develops, the viewer's sense of the topic Peleshian is exploring evolves, and these repetitions accumulate implication and emotional power. Each of the seven Peleshian films being shown in Washington is an operatic rumination on a particular theme. The Beginning uses mostly archival material to cast the October Revolution as a metaphor for liberation of all kinds. In We (1969), Peleshian focuses on his native Armenia as a means of exploring forms of ethnic unity and resistance to assimilation that are shared by cultures the world over. In The Inhabitants (1970), the subject is animal life's global battle against relentless human encroachment. For The Seasons (1975), Peleshian again turned to Armenia, evoking the human struggle to wring sustenance and community from the natural landscape. In Our Age (1982), his subject is the human quest to conquer mortality, as epitomized by the space program, where the "final countdown" instigates a desire to transcend earthly existence. In The End (1992), life is a train journey into the light. And in Life (1993), the miracle of birth is emblematic of the agony and ecstasy of creation.
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