Still on the Lot

I was driving out of Yerevan towards Ashtarak, took a detour to look at a building, and found the cars instead.

Armenfilm is the studio Soviet Armenia made its films in, out on the north-western edge of the city. The main block is exactly what you’d hope for: a slab of tuff standing clear of the ground on concrete piers, so the whole ground floor is an open undercroft you can walk straight into. Across the upper wall there’s an incised line drawing — a face in profile with a city stacked up inside it, done in one wandering contour, as if somebody had scratched it into the stone with a nail and never lifted the point. In August light the tuff goes the colour of dry bread.

Then you step under it, out of the sun, and there are the cars.

What’s parked there

A black government limousine, long as a small bus, sitting low with the paint coming off the wings in continents of rust. A red saloon from somewhere in the fifties, round-shouldered, chrome still on it. Two dark Zhigulis, one nose-on with its round headlights and its grille full of dust.

They’re standing on paving slabs under a raw concrete ceiling with rusted conduit running the length of it and light fittings that stopped working a long time ago, against a wall of small square windows. Nothing has been staged. No sign, no rope, no explanation. They’re just in a row where somebody left them, which is the entire difference between this and a museum.

A film studio’s car park where none of the cars have moved since the studio was busy.

Whether they’re props or they’re what’s left of a fleet, I don’t know, and I couldn’t find out. Both readings work. A studio that shot period films would keep exactly these vehicles. A studio that used to run its own transport would end up with exactly these vehicles too.

Half a building

The place isn’t abandoned. There are cars at the far end that clearly do move, doors that open, glass that’s intact. It’s also not full: whole windows stay dark in the middle of a working afternoon, and there’s the particular quiet of a building using about a third of itself.

I didn’t go inside. There was nothing obviously stopping me and no reason to — everything I’d come for was out here under the block, in the shade, not going anywhere.