Tamara Stepanyan: Embers
”Cinema for me is a visual poem of time suspended”, says Tamara Stepanyan, according to the festival vod festivalscope. This sentence fits to characterise her fine personal film that takes its start at the grave of her (we learn) charismatic grandmother, Tamara, who was a person loved and respected by people around her – most of them do not live any longer, those who are still there talk with passion to Tamara about Tamara, and about their meetings on May 9, the liberation day of the WW2. It’s all about time and remembering, some of the survivors remember clearly, one says about remembering that her imagination could have changed a lot of what really happened, one says that it is hard to bring back the good memories in an Armenia, that has completely changed, and not for the better, after Soviet times, and one has fallen into dementia.
Tamara Stepanyan films her characters with warmth, she asks her questions to the freedom fighters of 1945 with respect and out of curiosity, her film has a flow in storytelling and what is the strongest quality is her personal commentary that comes nicely and natural as a granddaughter, who loves her grandmother.
Armenia, Lebanon, Qatar, 2012, 77 mins.
