Written by Sona Karapoghosyan
Frunze Dovlatyan’s Barev, Yes Em (Hello, It’s Me) premiered at the Cannes Film Festival nearly 60 years ago in 1966. This year, the film returned to the Croisette as part of the Cannes Classics program, where it was presented to the audience in a newly restored version.
Vigen Galstyan, Head of the Heritage Department of the National Cinema Center of Armenia (NCCA) at the time of 2023 Cannes Film Festival, was one of the key figures behind the restoration. Galstyan describes the film’s restoration and premiere at the festival as a crucial point in the NCCA's larger strategy for the promotion of Armenian cinema during its centenary in 2023. “Cannes and other A-class festivals have a very curatorial approach to their classics program, so to be considered for the official selection, you need to put into motion some networking strategies,” he explains.
The NCCA team deliberated for over a year about its choice of film to pitch to the festival, the final decision to propose Hello, It’s Me, was clear– not only for its track record as the first Armenian feature film to be included in the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival, but also for its important position in the history of Armenian cinema. “Hello, It’s Me is the film that arguably launched the Armenian New Wave,” continues Galstyan. “Also, as an anti-war film, it is extremely relevant to our situation today. At the same time, it’s a film about technological progress and the consequences of science upon basic human relations.”
Soon after the choice was made, Shushanik Mirzakhanyan, Director of the National Cinema Center of Armenia, and Melik Karapetyan, its film commissioner, met with Cannes director Thierry Frémaux and Gérald Duchaussoy, the responsible curators behind the Cannes Classics program, to pitch the film. The initial discussions evoked considerable interest from the Cannes programmers, but the final decision would have to be made on the basis of the quality of the restoration. And because Armenia is just taking its first steps in the area of proper restoration and digitization of its cinema heritage, finding an experienced company with a certain pedigree and reputation was essential for the process. Thus, the Latvian company Studio Locomotive became an important piece of the puzzle in the restoration of Hello, It’s Me.
The restoration itself was completed within two months, but the overall process was much more complicated. Since the original camera negatives of many Armenian films, including Hello, It's Me, are held in Gosfilmofond in Russia, which does not loan negatives, it was only possible to start with the restoration after receiving a 4K scan from Russia. The National Archive of Armenia held the original interpositive of the film, which became the second reference point for the restoration. “For reference, we also had a high definition version scanned and made by a private company called Armenia sometime around 2008, which owned the rights to the Hayfilm Studio catalog at the time. The crucial aspect about this so-called restoration is that Albert Yavuryan, the film’s cinematographer, was still alive at the time and supervised its color-grading,” says Galstyan. “Altogether, we were lucky: the original camera negative was still in very good shape, we had all these reference materials, and the process in general went really smoothly.” To make sure that the film was not “over-cleaned” through the process of the restoration, the team also left some of the defects of the camera negative, to help preserve the authentic texture of the film.
In Hayfilm Studio, films used to be made without synchronous sound, with the recording happening separately, usually in two versions: Armenian for the local market, Russian for the rest of the Soviet Union. Thus, while there being only one camera negative, Hello, It's Me has two original soundtracks, both supervised by the director himself. The scanned version sent from Russia was dubbed in Russian, while the version scanned at the Public Television laboratory in Armenia had an Armenian soundtrack. “It was a real conundrum: how do you deal with this linguistic issue?,” Galstyan says. “Of course, it is an Armenian film, and it makes no sense to present it in Russian. At the same time, the quality of the Armenian version is not very good. Clearly they paid a lot more attention to the Russian version than to the Armenian one. Another problem was the fact that a considerable part of the film takes place in Russia and you have these legendary Russian actors like Rolan Bykov, Margarita Terekhova, and Natalya Fateeva voicing their roles. How do you lose that?”
They ultimately decided to mix the two soundtracks to create a diegetic version of the film. This meant that when the characters are in Russia, they are, as they would be, conversing in Russian. In scenes set in Armenia, they would speak Armenian. “We created a bilingual mix that uses both of the original soundtracks, and I personally think that this elevates the film to another level, because all these cultural and linguistic tensions already apparent in the film become more underlined and tangible. Had we used just one version, many of the subtle linguistic touches used by the filmmakers would have been lost,” concludes Galstyan.
The film was very well received in Cannes, even if the festival is not strictly a platform for presenting classical cinema. “The Cannes Classics program may primarily carry symbolic value, but it also serves as a launching pad for the distributors,” Galstyan says. “With Hello, It's Me, for example, it was crucial that it was picked up by French distributor MK2, who will represent it as its international sales agent.” This means that MK2 owns the rights for the international sales for a contract period of 10 years, for which it plans to target streaming services, festival screenings, as well as to find theatrical distributors for the film in France and other territories.
The National Cinema Center of Armenia has many different restoration projects running in parallel to each other. Among them, the team plans to restore some of the films by Henrik Malyan, considered to be foundational works of Armenian cinema. They are also exploring films such as Arman Manaryan’s 1971 film The Heghnar Spring and Dmitry Kesayants’ 1993 film Catastrophe. On the eve of the director’s centenary, the animated films by Valentin Potmomogov are being restored, along with animated films by Armenian women filmmakers. In addition to the restoration work, NCCA is looking to obtain new 4K digital scans of Armenian silent films that are stored in Russian archives, and which are not available in Armenia. Some of these had even been considered lost, and have only recently come to light, such as Hamo Bek-Nazaryan’s 1952 film The Second Caravan. “Restoration is an expensive and complicated process that usually cannot happen without serious governmental support, as well as sponsorship from the private sector,” says Galstyan. “With major, iconic titles like Hello, It's Me, it is generally easier to receive funding, and I would like to use the opportunity to thank the Hayastan All Armenian Fund for their generous support of the project. Without them, the restoration of Hello, It’s Me would not have happened. But it is also clear that the cinematic heritage of Armenia does not start and end with just a handful of very notable and recognizable titles. Even if the majority of the films may not be considered world-class masterpieces, they are, nevertheless, extremely important for the preservation of our cultural collective memory, as well as to showcase what Armenia was able to achieve within the cinematic art form. If that heritage is not just going to be preserved, but also integrated into the everyday cultural flow of our lives, we need to continue with our efforts that must be bolstered with more sustained infrastructural support.”
