Malian’s
career started in 1951 as a director in theaters of various towns of
Armenia (Artashat, Kirovakan, Ghapan) and on television. In 1954 he
entered Armenfilm, the cinema studios, where he was first an assistant
director and, since the 1960s, a director. In 1961-1962 he spent a year
at the Mosfilm studios, where he studied with two noted Soviet
directors, Mikhail Kalatozov (Kalatozishvili) and Sergei Bondarchuk.
Malian’s first films were of a genre that mixed lyricism and comedy, such as
The Guys of the Orchestra
(1960),
Road to the Circus
(1963), and
Monsieur Jacques and Others
(1964). His breakthrough came with
The Triangle
(1967),
one of his best films, which was crucial for the creation of a poetic
style in Armenian cinema. The film was endowed with immediacy and a
delicate taste for direction, with a powerful artistic discourse. He won
the State Award of Armenia in 1975 for this film.
Malian
characterized his films by the election of apparently minimal subjects,
which he later turned into meaningful, psychologically deep
generalizations. The fate of his heroes, their thoughts and experiences
were linked to the events of their time. Such was the case of his next
works:
We Are Our Mountains
(1969),
Father
(1972), and especially
Nahapet
(1977), which was released in the United States as
Life Triumphs.
The
latter, for which he wrote the screenplay on a short novel by Hrachia
Kochar, touched for the first time in Armenia the relatively taboo
subject of the Armenian Genocide through the lenses of a survivor and
his attempt to rebuild life after the catastrophe.
Malian became People’s Artist of Armenia in 1977 and People’s Artist of the Soviet Union in 1982. He also wrote and directed
A Piece of Sky
(1980), a reconstruction of life in pre-genocide Kharpert, based on a fragment of Vahan Totoventz’s memoir
Life on the Ancient Roman Road
. He would still write several films in the 1980s, such as
Gikor
(1982, based on Hovhannes Tumanian’s short story) and
White Dreams
(1985, also based on another episode of Totoventz’s memoir), and direct and write
A Drop of Honey
(1984, also based on a short story by Tumanian).
Yearning
(1990),
the first film to address Stalin’s repression, was posthumously filmed,
on a screenplay written by Malian and Ruben Hovsepian (based on another
short novel by Hrachia Kochar).
Henrik
Malian was not only a director, but also a long-time teacher. He taught
at the Khachatur Abovian Pedagogical Institute (now University) from
1971-1988, and was chair of Direction and Master Acting from 1975 on. He
was a professor at his alma mater, the Institute of Art and Theater,
from 1982 to 1988. In 1980 he founded and directed the Theater-Studio
for Film Actors, which was renamed after him in 1988.
He
passed away prematurely, at the age of 62, on March 14, 1988, in
Yerevan. The Henrik Malian Theater Studio is now directed by his
daughter, the actress Narine Malian.
