The economic and social crisis in Armenia following the collapse of the Soviet Union was accompanied by the decay and/or delegitimization and loss of prestige of various cultural institutions. Still functioning till today in Armenia are “creative unions” (the Writers’ Union, Composers’ Union, Painters’ Union, etc.) of the Soviet era that performed an important cultural-ideological mission that have lost one major segment of their functions and thus clearly display their non-conformity with the realities of a world in the process of globalization.

On the other hand, accompanying the invasion of global mass culture, the development of the entertainment industry and the spread of consumerist values and norms that began in the second half of the 1990’s, was the formation of new types of cultural institutions. In the first place, these were attempts to assimilate and implement market relations. The best example of this was the Miss Armenia contest which spawned similar contests that even reached into the kindergartens. A more recent example is the Eurovision contest, a purely entertainment-driven event. Similar initiatives and relations of state institutions sometimes have an extremely dramatic nature to them. We can recount how Armenia’s Ministry of Culture basically seized the right to hold the Miss Armenia pageant. This is the paradoxical joint operation between a state institution and a commercial enterprise.

What’s common for all these initiatives is that, regardless of their nature, since they appear in the international arena they unavoidably deal with representing the nation, the country, the serving-up of a certain national identity and the necessity of establishing relationships between the local and the global. On the one side there’s the imperative to thrust the national onto the international arena. Oftentimes, however, the other side is overlooked; namely adapting to the conditions dictated by the global cultural market. This sometimes means the transformation of the “national” to such an extent that it becomes unrecognizable. In the opinion of many, what was presented as being “Armenian” (according to assumed notions of what the outside world considers as Armenian) at the Eurovision contest was nothing of the kind. 

The other group of cultural initiatives includes international festivals with higher cultural aspirations - the “21 Herankarner”, the international festival of classical music; the “Hayfest” theatrical festival; the Gyumri Biennial of Contemporary Art; and of course the “Golden Apricot”, which in my estimation is the most successful in terms of goals, mass appeal and international prestige. It is understandable that here the cinema factor has a role with its much lager mass appeal relative to other forms of art. In turn, the film festival is understood to be an almost necessary component when it comes to national image making in the contemporary world. 

Despite its short-lived existence the “Golden Apricot” is yearly expanding its sphere of operation with the inclusion of works not characteristic for a film festival but nevertheless dictated by the local situation. For example, the Armenian-Turkish seminar entitled “Film and History” was an attempt to start international cultural dialogue and will probably be continued. This year another novelty will be a seminar devoted to the questions of film journalism and film critique. During this year’s festival there will also be a conference, sponsored by the Council of Europe, entitled, “The cinema as a means for inter-cultural dialogue”. The international project for movie-making entitled, “Directors without Borders” was started much earlier and successfully continues on.

I wish to underline the fact that all the above are working forms that encompass clear expressed elements of cultural politics, that they aspire to construct a new cultural identity in the post-Soviet period and that they traditionally had been the privileged property of the state apparatus. In other words, new types of cultural projects and institutions appeared on the scene where goals and objectives with national import entered their circles of performance.

Let us briefly outline a few of those difficulties that the film festival has encountered along the way. In my estimation, the first problem that the film festival should have resolved was to justify having an Armenian cinematic tradition and movie-making sector and then to affirm the “Golden Apricot” as an independent film festival. This particularly means to free oneself from the confines of the Soviet tradition and stay far removed from Russian influence. This isn’t such an easy task if we remember that even though national film studios existed in the Soviet Union the movie-making sector was an “all-union” enterprise, stretching from personnel training all the way to censorship. It was never obvious, let’s say, that certain masters of the cinema were in fact Armenian as was the case with Parajanov and Peleshyan. (It is difficult, for example, to place “Skizbu” (The Beginning) or “Mer Daru” (Our Century) within the parameters of Soviet Armenian and consequently, Armenian cinema. Here, I don’t refer to the enormous difficulties facing movie-making in Armenia at the present.

Thus, it was very important to separate the Armenian cinema from the Soviet cinema and subsequently present it as Armenian on the international scene while at the same time including names of film makers from other countries as well. (Here we are talking about Armenian cinema in general and not that just operating in the Republic of Armenia.) In general, it is appropriate to mention that the “Golden Apricot” is presented as an all-Armenian festival rather than one limited to Armenia proper. Every year film directors of Armenian origin from around the world participate in the festival. However, on the other hand, the festival’s self-identification with Armenia is evident. This ambiguity is one of the defining traits of the festival.

As such, the festival attempts to define, with the help of film, a certain cultural “Armenian-ness” as a global project, as more of a possibility than any one given thing.

Just as important as the international scene, was for the film festival to be presented locally, in Armenia, as an Armenian phenomenon, to attract the moviegoer and more correctly, to mould an audience of viewers interested in high-quality film. A moviegoer that would embrace the festival as his or her own and in this way the festival would be transformed into one segment of Armenia’s cultural context.

In other words, the “Golden Apricot” constantly finds itself in the difficult role of shaping relationships between the local and global, striving to construct its own identity and establish itself both within international frameworks of cultural exchange as well as in a local cultural context.

Before ending, I’d like to return to the plans underway for film journalism and film critique. I am certain that without contemporary film journalism and film critique, individuals who must master the skills and discourse on par with the international scene, any solution of the above-mentioned problems will be imperfect. In order to both operate on the global playing field and to redefine/reconceptualize the cinematic tradition in Armenia and formulate a new film culture here, it is vital that we have journalists and critics able to analyze and comment on the world of cinema.