Armand Yervant Tufenkian is a first-generation Armenian-American filmmaker, whose work focuses on concepts of relation, stories of place and placelessness, and the histories and practices of traditions between humans and their environment. His films place emphasis on how the formal structures, methods and materials that create images merge with their subjects.
In 2014 his film in lightning Agnes, made at an elevation of 10,000 feet in the Zirkel Wilderness Area of Colorado, was featured in the Fall edition of the Millennium Film Journal and Kathryn Ramey’s book Experimental Filmmaking.
He recently completed Accession, a film concerning seed exchange through letter correspondence, which has screened internationally at festivals such as the Viennale, Art of the Real at Lincoln Center, Mar del Plata, Underdox, Pravo Ljudski Sarajevo and more recently at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje and the Reimagining the Land retrospective at Sheffield Doc/Fest.
His work has been supported by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the Puffin Foundation, City of Chicago's Individual Artist Program, the Kathryn W. Davis Foundation, and others. He did undergraduate studies at Colby College, doctoral studies at Duke University, and studied fine arts at the California Institute of the Arts. He sometimes works as a fire lookout in the Sierras and lives near Los Angeles, working on a new film titled In the Manner of Smoke.
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Recent Screenings and Exhibitions
Accession
Sheffield Doc/Fest (Reimagining the Land retrospective) | Aug-Sep 2020
Mimesis Documentary Festival | August 2020
Our Habitats Programme | May 2020
Daimon Muestra Internacional de Cine | April 2020
UnionDocs | February 2020
Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje | December 2019
Pravo Ljudski Sarajevo | December 2019
Viennale | October 2019
Art of the Real at Lincoln Center | April 2019
Mar del Plata | November 2018
Underdox | October 2018
Temporary Fields
Lithium Gallery | November 2018
Recent Press
David Perrin. "Art of the Real 2019." MUBI Notebook. 2019.
Jacob Zicheng Zhang. "An Archival Impulse, or Not: Accessioning." gallery no one. 2019.
Dustin Chang. "Art of the Real: A Celebration of Non-Narrative Filmmaking." ScreenAnarchy. 2019.
Lucía Salas. "Semillas del pasado/Seeds from the Past." Mar del Plata International Film Festival. 2018.
Neil Young. "Far from the shallow now: two highlights from Underdox." Modern Times Review. 2018.
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Contact
armandtufenkian [at] gmail