Exhibition

I Will Wear Your Beret Papa is a photographic requiem by Martiros Vartanov, an award-winning photographer and filmmaker, for his beloved father, Mikhail Vartanov, the member of the 2007 jury of Punto de Vista International Documentary Film Festival of Navarra, who passed away on New Year’s Eve 2009 in Hollywood, California. The 12 black and white photographs were made in Spain during the winter of 2007 and lovingly capture Vartanov in his famous beret on the streets of Pamplona, as well as his meetings here with Jean Vigo’s daughter, the film critic Luce Vigo, Andrei Tarkovsky’s sister Marina Tarkovskaya, and Russian filmmakers Alexander Gordon and Herz Frank.

Mikhail Vartanov cemented his reputation as one of most important Armenian intellectuals of his generations with a series of Russian language essays, The Unmailed Letters. In 1968, with his camera, against the government direction, Vartanov documented the genius Sergei Paradjanov at work on his landmark motion picture The Color of Pomegranates, and then exquisitely lensed Artavazd Peleshian’s classic documentary Seasons of the Year (1975). For the past 18 years, Vartanov’s documentary masterpiece Parajanov: The Last Spring holds the record and the distinction of winning the first and the only Russian Academy of Cinema Arts Award for a film made in Armenia.