Festival Transcaucases 20/21, October 4 to December 10, 2021

Transcaucases Festival: the Caucasus in all its plurality

From October 4 to December 10, 2021, Inalco will host - on its two sites - various cultural and scientific events as part of the Transcaucases Festival. Launched in 2014, this festival has found its rightful place at Inalco, where Caucasian languages and civilizations have been given pride of place since the institute was founded.

The Transcaucases Festival aspires to a disciplinary openness, across several fields of artistic and cultural creation, as well as to the decompartmentalization of the region's cultures. It approaches the region from unexpected angles, as evocations and impressions of the Caucasus. It also hopes to provoke encounters between different audiences: students, researchers, teachers, artists, players in the field and amateurs from all walks of life.

A heterogeneous program

Among the festival's highlights, we welcome renowned double bassist Claude Tchamitchian and his jazz trio "Naïri", named after the ancient territory of Armenia. Actress and director Anne Consigny will be present following the screening of her documentary film Je prends ta peine (2019), a moving film about a mother and daughter's struggle with illness and an unexpected friendship, which she shot between Paris and Yerevan. A tribute will be paid to filmmaker Liliane de Kermadec, who passed away this past year, through the screening of some of her films including Très chère indépendance and Les Enfants de Chouchi, which offer, between fiction and documentary, an immersion in Nagorno-Karabagh in the aftermath of the war of independence. Nora Martirosyan's first feature film, Si le vent tombe (If the Wind Falls), presented in official competition at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival, will address the challenges facing this territory. Through Mari Gulbiani's gripping documentary, we'll discover Pankissi, a remote valley in Georgia that holds the record for departures for jihad in Syria and Iraq, while Rati Oneli's multi-award-winning film will take us to a small, abandoned mining town in Georgia, where the inhabitants carry on with their routine with sublime resilience. Finally, Levan Akin's And Then We'll Dance - selected for the 2019 Cannes "Directors' Fortnight" - will plunge us into the Georgian National Ensemble and tell of the struggle of bodies, dancing, suffering and longing for each other, in a world shaped by tradition.

Through this heterogeneous program, the 20/21 edition of the Festival Transcaucases enables exchanges by exploring different fields of artistic and scientific creation.

Different fields of artistic and scientific creation

The festival will also feature roundtable discussions. One day will be devoted to the political and social issues of sexual orientation and gender in the Caucasus, and will compare the points of view of researchers, artists, activists and association leaders. The months of October, November and December will be punctuated by numerous events: presentations by authors and books focusing on the representation of travelers in the region.

Finally, at the crossroads of ethnographic investigation and artistic expression, the exhibition by American artist and researcher Hazel Antaramian Hofman will shed light on the odyssey of diaspora Armenians who, after the Second World War, left France, Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Greece, Palestine or the United States, to "return" to a simulacrum of a homeland, the Soviet Armenia they didn't know.

About the organization of the Transcaucases Festival

For this edition, Taline Ter Minassian, professor at Inalco and instigator of the Transcaucases Festival, has called on two other colleagues: Anouche Der Sarkissian, professor at the University of Nanterre and former show administrator, and Sophie Hohmann, senior lecturer at Inalco and specialist in the region.

Programming 20/21

October 4 to October 22

8am-10pm
Exhibition: "Imaginary Letters to Vasily Grossman: Post-World War II Repatriation to Soviet Armenia. "
Hazel Antaramian Hofman.
Galerie de l'autitorium
Pôle des langues et civilisations (65 rue des Grands Moulins)

Monday, October 4

7:30pm-9:30pm
Jazz concert: trio Naïri (Claude Tchamitchian, Catherine Delaunay, Pierrick Hardy).
Auditorium du PLC (65 rue des Grands Moulins)

Wednesday, October 6

6pm-8pm
Debate screening: "En attendant papa" (2018) by Mari Gulbiani (1h20min). The screening will be followed by a discussion moderated by Sophie Hohmann (Inalco) and Anne Le Huerou (Paris Nanterre).
Auditorium de la Maison de la Recherche (2 rue de Lille)

Monday, October 11

6:30pm-9:30pm
Screening-debate: "Si le Vent tombe" (2020) by Nora Martirosyan (1h40min). The screening will be followed by a meeting with the director.
Auditorium du PLC (65 rue des Grands Moulins)

Wednesday October 13

6-8pm
Projection of "Très chère indépendance" (55min), "Les Enfants de Chouchi" (25 min) and "Paris" (5min) in tribute to Liliane de Kermadec. Screening presented by Taline Ter Minassian (Inalco).
Auditorium of the Maison de la Recherche (2 rue de Lille)

Friday, October 15

6-8:30pm
Screening-debate: "City of the Sun" (2017) by Rati Oneli (104 min) and "STORGETNYA" (2020) by Hovig Hagopian (21 min). The screening will be followed by a debate moderated by Jean Radvanyi (Inalco) and Sophie Hohmann (Inalco), in the presence of director Hovig Hagopian.
Auditorium de la Maison de la Recherche (2 rue de Lille)

Monday, October 18

6-8pm
Round table: "French travels in the land of the Soviets: Ukraine and the Caucasus". As part of the CREE debates. Iryna Dmytrychyn (Inalco), Rachel Mazuy, Sophie Hohmann (Inalco) and Taline Ter Minassian (Inalco).
Auditorium de la Maison de la Recherche (2 rue de Lille)

Thursday, October 21

4-6pm
Round table: "1918-1920: The First Republic of Armenia". Around the publication of Rouben's book Le Défi de l'Indépendance (Editions Thaddée) by Taline Ter Minassian and the publication of Actes du colloque 100 ans après le Front de l'Est. L'Arménie et le Levant (Editions Thaddée) by Hilda Tchoboian.
Room 4.06 (65 rue des Grands Moulins)

Friday, October 22

10am - 7pm
Interdisciplinary symposium: "Sexual orientation and gender identities in the South Caucasus: political and social issues"
Alain Navarra-Navassartian (sociologist and art historian, PhD from Columbia and The New School and president of the NGO Hyestart), Hélène Marquié (Professor of arts and gender studies, Paris 8), Arthur Clech (teacher-researcher, EHESS and CERCEC), Aude Le Moullec Rieu (President of the ARDHIS association), Kosta Karakashyan (choreographer and director), Anahit Dasseux-Ter Mesropian (psychologist and psychoanalyst) and Sévan Minassian (psychiatrist).
Auditorium du PLC (65 rue des Grands Moulins)

7pm - 10pm
Screening-debate: "Et puis nous danserons" (2019) by Levan Akin (1h53). The screening will be followed by a debate moderated by Hélène Marquié and Alain Navarra-Navassartian.
Auditorium du PLC (65 rue des Grands Moulins)

Tuesday, November 16

6pm - 8pm
Round table: "Caucasian thrillers".
Naïri Nahapetian, Taline Ter Minassian and Satenig Toufanian. Moderator: Isabelle Kortian.
Auditorium de la Maison de la Recherche (2 rue de Lille)

Friday, November 19

6pm-7pm
Conference: "Patrimoine numérique et patrimonialisation : actualités et perspectives pour l'arménien". Chahan Vidal-Gorène (Ecole Nationale des Chartes-PSL and Calfa).
Auditorium of the Maison de la Recherche (2 rue de Lille)

7-8pm
Conference: "Crossing the Caucasus in the 17th century: cartographic experiences and representations of the voyage".
Werner Gaboreau (Paris 3).
Auditorium de la Maison de la Recherche (2 rue de Lille)

Tuesday, November 30

6pm - 8pm
Roundtable: "From the Caucasus to Kansas. Leon Z. Surmelian, I Ask You Ladies and Gentlemen, [1945] 2019: Rediscovery of an Armenian's exilic narrative in America".
Esther Heboyan (Université d'Artois), Charikleia Kefalidou (Université de Tours), Anouche Der Sarkissian (Paris-Nanterre and Sorbonne Nouvelle), Taline Ter Minassian (Inalco).
Auditorium de la Maison de la Recherche (2 rue de Lille)

Wednesday, December 8

7:30pm - 9:30pm
Screening-debate: "Je prends ta peine" (2019) by Anne Consigny (1h06). The screening will be followed by a meeting with actress and director Anne Consigny.
Auditorium du PLC (65 rue des Grands Moulins)

Friday, December 10

8:30pm - 10pm
Illustrated lecture: Caucasian polyphonies.
Patrizia Metzler, artistic director of the Bach Collegium Paris.
Auditorium du PLC (65 rue des Grands Moulins)

Practical information

The festival takes place in three spaces:

• La galerie du Pôle des langues et civilisations: 65 rue des grands moulins, 75013 Paris
• L'auditorium de la Maison de la recherche: 2 rue de Lille, 75007 Paris
• L'auditorium du Pôle des langues et civilisations: 65 rue des grands moulins, 75013 Paris