The work was available on our platform only for the period of the screening.
“Voices from within” (00:10:00) by Varoujan Froundjian, Lebanon, USA, 2023
This 10 minute long experimental film is a tribute to all those who have been affected by the traumas and emotional discomfort caused by mental illness. The images and the voices do not attempt to express the pain that all those who have been affected and who are struggling with emotional pain in realistic terms. With an experimental approach an abstraction of this illness is presented to the viewer hoping that it does genuinely address the issue of mental illness and the ones who are affected by it struggle every day.
Bio
Born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1952 from Armenian ancestry, I have studied theater and film making and directed several plays. But my exposure to the experimental films by early pioneers like, Bunūel, Stan Brakhage, Norman McLaren and Maya Deren created a whole new outlook and creative vision for me. Currently living in United States, I create my images through videos and digitally painted images.
Director Statement
Experimental and Non-Narrative genre of film making provides a vast spectrum of creative tools to express social, emotional, psychological and perhaps philosophical viewpoint of the artist.
My films are not an expression of a concept, theme or a story I would like to tell. Most of the time, my films are simply the outcome of a stream of consciousness which without even my own knowledge comes out with shapes or forms without my intentions. And it is simply an accident that at the end my films have some kind of form and tell a story of my inner world without me being aware of it. And that’s one of the elements I like in experimental or abstract film-making where the film flows without supervision and planning where our inner psychological chemistry dictates the outcome.
