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EMBERS OF THE SUN
This lyrical short film evokes the haunting beauty and enduring power of Armenia’s prehistoric monuments and celebrates their relationship to the wild and otherwordly landscape. Hidden in remote areas of Armenia’s mountains, many of these sites are presented here for the first time: the colossal megalithic complex of Zorats Karer; the standing stones of Navur and Shamiram; the enigmatic petroglyphs of the Siunik and Gegham mountains - mysterious vestiges of the Neolithic/Bronze Age cultures which flourished in the Armenian Highlands between 9 and 3 thousand years ago.
Embers of the Sun was born of Zareh’s deep fascination with prehistoric standing stones. Having known about these since his childhood in England, he was stunned to discover monuments in Armenia practically identical to British and European sites, such as Stonehenge. Marrying the expressive camerawork of Vahag Ter Hakopian to an evocative musical score, Embers of the Sun sets out to convey the atmosphere of these places; that feeling of being in a landscape so isolated that the temporal distance between prehistory and the present seems to collapse. To achieve this, Zareh and sound designer Vahan Bakunts crafted a soundtrack drawn from recordings of old Armenian wind instruments, such as the pastoral blul and sh’vi, as well as the Zurna, whose strident, bagpipe-like sound has such an archaic sonority. Also used in the film are solo recordings of an Iranian frame drum called a Daf. Used in the mystical tradition of Persian music, these rhythms convey the sense of high ritual palpable at huge cult sites such as Zorats Karer.
Located at the threshold of both Europe and the Near East, Armenia is a land of stone, forged millions of years ago in the volcanic crucible of her mountains. In the vast, remote spaces of the highlands, sky and earth seem equal, interchangeable dominions, terrestrial and ethereal expressions of a singular, infinite space. For the archaic consciousness, it was an environment of transcendental, almost terrifying beauty, charged with power and meaning. As a response to these surroundings, the ordered presence of prehistoric standing stones – among the earliest form of religious monument in the world - seems so natural as to appear an organic expression of the landscape. This reveals much about the worldview of their builders.
While their specific function remains elusive, it seems that standing stones, whether in circles or alone, were focal points in rites concerned with sustaining the cycles of death and life. Suspended in space and time like the axis of a wheel, the ritual joined heaven and earth, the ephemeral and the eternal, the living and the dead, affirming the cosmic order on which the world depended. We can imagine that prehistoric men and women, in the words of Armen Manoukian, "...worshiped stones insofar as these sent them back to other realities, conceived of primarily as centers of spiritual energy to which they could entrust their own defense and that of their dead… the stones were, in this sense, used as instruments." With its rows of holed stones Zorats Karer, a rare example of a large scale megalithic site outside of Europe (such as Stonehenge), has given rise to speculation about its use as an astronomical observatory, used to chart the movements of the sun, moon, and auspicious stars for rituals connected with the seasonal life cycle of the crop and the community.
Just as Armenia’s standing stones are part of a cultural continuum reaching from Northern Europe to the Indian subcontinent, the prehistoric rock art of the Armenian Highlands have their counterparts in Sweden, Italy, Mongolia, North America and elsewhere. Armenia’s petroglyphs are found on the metallic surfaces of stones piled in massive clusters around the husks of volcanoes, high in the Alpine zone, around 3000 meters above sea level. It is for a period of only 3-4 months that these places are habitable, offering superior grazing for livestock, good hunting, and front row seats to the universe. The view of mountains as natural temples, or cosmic centers, in antiquity suggest that the rock art was created to ritualize this sacred landscape, possibly marking stations of a pilgrimage or ceremonial procession in the yearly reenactment of a creation myth. Such rituals, like those connected with standing stones, would be required to renew, or sustain, the cosmic order.
The petroglyphs seem like lithic photographs of Bronze Age life, depicting birds, reindeer, bulls, dancing, and hunting. There are also symbols, including early incarnations of the swastika, representing the eternal cycle of both the sun and the universe itself. The most common image by far, however, is that of the wild bezoar goat, indigenous to Asia Minor and clearly a totem of epic significance for the men and women who lived up here many thousands of summers ago. Indeed, the bezoar is the wild ancestor of the domestic goat, and its representation here, in images of herding and hunting, seem to depict this period of early domestication, as far back as 8000 years ago. They are so prominent amongst the rock carvings, that the old Armenian name for petroglyph is "Aytzagrer", meaning ‘goat-writing’. In confronting these images, one can imagine the awe that the artists felt when seeing these huge animals darting majestically along the vertical peaks around them.
It is both the awe of our prehistoric ancestors in experiencing the natural world, and the awe that we feel in confronting them through their creations, which Embers of the Sun seeks to express.
Embers of the Sun has been broadcast repeatedly on national television in Armenia, and was an official selection at the 2001 AFFMA Film Festival in Los Angeles, and the Armenian Film Festival in New York and San Francisco in 2002 and 2004 respectively.
Embers of the Sun. 13 minutes. 2000. Produced and Directed by Zareh Tjeknavorian/Camera Vahagn Ter Hakobian/Editor Alina Avagian/Sound Design Vahan Bakunts |