Scott MacDonald: This title has several layers of implication. It refers to the beginnings of social movements, and to the beginning of a new kind of film history where montage becomes important, and to the beginning of your film career. Artavazd Pelechian: It is my beginning, and the beginning of our modern history – a beginning that has no end and that ends with a new beginning. SM: One could say that in society there is always continuous revolution of one kind or another. AP: But in this instance, I was referring specifically to the October Revolution. In various instances I incorporated other processes of liberation. Of course, everyone has his own beginnings. SM: There’s a very unusual technique used in Skizbe. We see what is essentially a still photograph, which then goes into motion. That gesture is done over and over during an early passage of the film. It’s almost like looking at the beginning of cinema. AP: I was thinking of my own visual language. I was making an analogy to the way a train starts, gets going, and then stops. The film has its start, slowly it stops and starts, and then eventually the motion is continuous, like a train’s. SM: When you made Skizbe, which is almost entirely archival footage, were you inventing that form so far as you knew or did you know of other films made entirely of archival footage? AP: It’s mostly archival footage. There is a little bit of my own footage. I used archival footage because it has the impact of fact. SM: But did you know of earlier filmmakers who had worked with archival footage? AP: No. I came to the idea myself. People had used archival material, but not in the way I used it. The people at the institute were very shocked, surprised that I had actually used the footage that was available there. It wasn’t the thing to do. Furthermore, to try to tell, in ten minutes, 50 years of our history was already a risk, and a first in our film history.

Artavazd Pelechian, interviewed by Scott MacDonald in A Critical Cinema 3: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers, University of California Press, Berkeley 1998