Masterclass with Yerbant Gianikian

Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi were an artistic and filmmaking duo who explored, through archival images, the meaning of a present capable of questioning its own history and imagining the possibility of liberation. Gianikian will guide us into a unique method of inquiry—one that cinema, in rare cases, allows like no other discipline.

An architect of Armenian origin, Gianikian is among the most remarkable explorers of cinematic memory. Together with Ricci Lucchi, he spent more than half a century unveiling the hidden layers of film archives and exposing the dark sediments of history—colonialism, wars, exiles, forgotten crowds. With their “analytical camera,” the duo transformed fragile reels into meditations on pain and humanity, where anonymous faces emerge as voices of a universal memory.

On Wednesday, September 8, 2025 at 3:30 PM at Kulturni dom Nova Gorica we will screen Prigionieri della guerra, followed by a conversation in English with the author – a unique opportunity to meet a master of cinematic thought. That same evening, at 8:30 PM, the film Frente a Guernica will be shown in the same venue. The award ceremony of the Darko Bratina Award with the screening of I diari di Angela - Noi due cineasti. Capitolo terzo will take place on Saturday, September 11, 2025 at 6:30 PM at Kinemax in Gorizia.

Kinoatelje’s bond with Gianikian & Ricci Lucchi runs deep: from the reconstruction of La sentinella della patria using fragments preserved in our Fondo Simonelli, to their Italian premiere of the restored Profumati at Film Forum 2016 in Gorizia, their work has long been intertwined with our archive, our city, and our history.

Applications for the masterclass here.