Synopsis:

An improvisational talk that explores the dynamic and synthesis capacity of smoke as a relational form, in its range of iterations, and links to the methods, discourses, practices, and desires that were part of making the film In the Manner of Smoke (2025), premiering next month at Cinéma du Reél.

Bio:

Armand Yervant Tufenkian is an Armenian filmmaker and artist, born in 1988 to parents from Aleppo, Syria. His films include Accession (2018), which maps an informal network of letter correspondence about the exchange of seeds. He did doctoral studies at Duke University, where he started a dissertation on the poetics of community in cinema, and studied filmmaking at CalArts. Previously he taught in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego and worked as a fire lookout in the Sierra Nevada. He is currently a lecturer in the Cinema Department at Binghamton University (SUNY). In the Manner of Smoke, a long-form observation of disparate perspectives on forest fires, will premiere in March 2025.