Drawing from his experience as a fire-lookout in the Sequoia forests of the Sierra Nevada in California, Armand Yervant Tufenkian constructs a careful study of the visual documentation of forest fires. Shot on 16mm but bringing together various media technology (from painting to photography to surveillance webcams) and modes of representation, ”In the Manner of Smoke” moves back and forth between California, where Tufenkian’s camera scans the landscape, and London, where artist Dan Hays is observed as he meticulously reproduces, painting pixel by pixel, blown-up webcam footage from the look-out cabin, including images from a particularly devastating fire in 2015 when the landscape choked with smoke for several days. – Close-up Film Centre
Through auto-fictional voiceover that recalls his paranoid wanderings in a long-abandoned Fresno, California, and an encounter with a mysterious woman lamenting the fate of the ancient Wawoma (sequoia) tree, Tufenkian muses on his role as a passive observer of destruction. The cumulative effect of these strategies on the viewer is a renewed sense of curiosity about the things images can contain, how they contain them, and, just like the forest fires Tufenkian
anticipated in his own lookout, what happens when containment fails. – In Review Online
Armand Yervant Tufenkian
USA, GB 2025 | International Award, Cinéma du Réel
90 min | English
Armand Yervant Tufenkian
Born in 1988. Armenian-American filmmaker, artist and author. Worked at Duke University on the poetics of community in cinema; studied film at CalArts. Taught in the
Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, and worked as a fire lookout in the Sierra Nevada. Lecturer in film at Binghamton University New York (SUNY).
Films (selection)
The Rhythm of Rutledge 2012 | Recognitions 2013 | In Lightning Agnes 2014 | Inquiries on Community (or, two plus N where N is Greater than or Equal to one) 2017 | Accession (with Tamer Hassan) 2018 (13. UX )
R+B+DOP+E+P: Armand Yervant Tufenkian | S: Julian Flavin