Background
Armand Yervant Tufenkian is an Armenian filmmaker, artist and writer. His debut feature In the Manner of Smoke, a long-form observation of disparate perspectives on forest fires, won the International Award at its premiere at Cinéma du Réel.
Previous films include Accession (2018), which maps an informal network of seed exchange through letter correspondence, and In lightning Agnes (2014), made at an elevation of 10,000 feet in the Zirkel Wilderness Area of Colorado.
Tufenkian’s films have exhibited internationally at festivals and arts venues such as the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Art of the Real at Lincoln Center, Courtisane, Open City, Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM), Viennale, Mar del Plata, Underdox, Bogotà International Documentary Festival (MIDBO), and as part of the Conscious Landscapes exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopke (2019), the Reimagining the Land retrospective at Sheffield Doc/Fest (2020), the City and Science Biennial at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid (2020), the Cinema for All Pavilion at the Thailand Biennale (2024), and the Jeu de Paume, Paris (2025), and have been featured in publications such as MUBI Notebook, Public Parking, Revue Jeune Cinéma, Millenium Film Journal, Modern Times Review, and Kathryn Ramey’s book Experimental Filmmaking.
His work has been supported recently by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and residencies at Fogo Island Arts, theDjerassi Resident Artists Program, Monson Arts, and previously by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Puffin Foundation, and City of Chicago’s Individual Artist Program.
Tufenkian pursued doctoral studies at Duke University, where he began work on a dissertation exploring 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).
Selected Projects
- Կապ Կար (Knot’s Keep, feature length film) [forthcoming 2026]
- In the Manner of Smoke (2025, feature-length film)
- Sfumato: Takes on the Poetics of Smoke (lecture-performance)
- Accession (2018, medium-length film)
- In lightning Agnes (2014, short film)
Education
- MFA, California Institute of the Arts
- MA, Duke University
- AB, Colby College
Research Interests
- Relation and process
- Modernity, technology and history
- Environmental and critical humanities
- Philosophies of the image
- Labor and craft
Teaching Interests
- Histories of cinema and art
- Documentary methodologies
- 16mm filmmaking
- Expanded cinema and installation
- Narrative
- Parafiction
- Poetics
- Sound
- Editing and montage
- Time and space
- Critique
- Film curation