Local audiences discovered the thrilling cinema of Peleshian at the San Francisco Film Festival in 1991. We are pleased to now have these films in the PFA Collection. The editing of Peleshian's films is in the (Soviet) montage tradition, though he defines his approach as "distance montage" in contradistinction to the collision montage polemicized by Eisenstein. Peleshian arranges individual shots and sound bites so that while no narrative or polemical continuity is immediately apparent, an overall vision gradually evolves. Images and sound are repeated, always in new contexts, until the entirety of Peleshian's sense of a subject-whether it's the day-to-day life of farmers and herdsmen in his native Armenia or the global fascination with the exploration of space by Soviets and Americans-can be comprehended. Peleshian's films are simultaneously visions of human societies and personal expressions.-Scott MacDonald