Last year the guest of the golden Apricot festival was the miraculous cinema magician Tonino Guerra, who’s famous not only for his cinema scripts but also paintings, poems, designed fountains and lanterns.
Guerra with his essence is a Renaissance person. He sees miracle in every single rev of life and is able to deliver the expectation of miracle to people living next to him. He was admired by Armenia and last year he even prolonged his stay, as he was feeling very good here. He was encouraged by the images of Armenia. Most importantly he was admired not with the standard famous Armenian sights but things that are not very noticeable and popular in our country. He visions poetry in those images. For us pragmatic citizens of Armenia the fact that Armenia is a poetic country may seem as extra luxury but this fact gives inspiration to Guerra. “I have been to a village, where I saw a woman, who was collecting cherries from the tree and was so close to the clouds in the sky. I couldn’t have possibly imagined a more amazing scene. It was literally a perfect movie scene, where the bells were ringing and she was collecting cherries,” Guerra said. One year later Armenian images found their place in Guerra’s paintings, which he has exhibited in several countries and planning to bring those to Armenian in October of the current year. In Yerevan he will exhibit his famous lanterns, which are entitled “Tolstoy’s lanterns” and collages, which were born from his Armenian tour. “The impressions from Armenia were so powerful that they affected on my pieces. I am glad to be in the fatherland of my friend, Sergey Parajanov. Parajanov used to have a soaring imagination. I remember our first meeting. He said, “hello, come on inside.” And then he added, “now let’s run.” He held my hand and we ran to see how one of the streets of Tbilisi was been changed from pebbles to asphalt. He knelt down and started to caress the street. My collages were born from him and my visit to Armenia,” tells Guerra. On October 7-17 in the National Gallery of Armenia the films shot based on the scripts of Federico Felini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Vitoria de Sika, Andrey Tarkovski and other cinema novelists of the 20th century. Tonino Guerra will come to Armenia accompanied by stage designer and decorator Marina Azizyan, who lives in Saint Petersburg. She worked with the Italian master in 2004 create what’s called “Fantastic Dictionary”. She has rendered the decorative images of Guerra. Here Marina Azizyan has linked Guerra’s words to textures, letters to images and created a certain tale. She has sewed this novel out of tiny pieces, as sewing is one of her favorite occupations. The row of embroidered and handmade letters is whole images. It’s hard to guess, where the texture finishes and words start. During the exhibition music has accompanied the images. Actress Alisa Freynlikh was reading Guerra’s novels. “This series is like theater for me, where pieces of fabric have become actors,” says Azizyan. She is a theatrical painter, has worked in famous Russian theaters for years; has decorated in the Big Theater, Taganka Theater. Besides paintings and decorations she has also prepared puppets. “Items lose their form and adjust to us and we adjust to them,” this is one line from Guerra’s novel. He likes his pieces – paintings, lanterns and collages. He hopes that his fairy tale lanterns will find their due place in Armenia. And hopes that instead of plain lanterns in the parks in Armenian parks his abstract lanterns will spread light.