Beginning : from VGIK Moscow Film School

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Artavazd Peleshian, Armenian Filmaker. Creator of the "distance montage", Artavazd Peleshian, one of the key Soviet documentarians, removed the boundaries of feature and documentary films, editing both sequences as a real poetical unity. His "distance montage" was a new step in the development of film editing. Even his student works (The Earth of the People 1966 and the Beginning 1967) shot at VGIK, the prestige film school in Moscow, were awarded numerous prizes and he gained recognition among filmmakers. Alongside his very successful solo career, Peleshian was invited to direct archive footage by such masters as Lev Kulidzhanov for Zvyozdnaya minuta (1972), Andrei Konchalovsky for Sibiriada (1979) and Mikhail Vartanov directed "Autumn Pastoral" Osennyaya pastoral (1971) from Peleshian's screenplay.