Single-channel video installation, 2K, 4:3, colour, sound, 22′, 2023. Edition of 3.

Three to Midnight recreates the Arizona Club, a 1960s nightclub on the outskirts of Addis Ababa – a famous meeting place for Ethio-jazz musicians, frequented by their Armenian counterparts, who had arrived in Ethiopia decades earlier as a marching band of child refugees. Known as Arba Lijoch – “the forty children” in Amharic – they came from Palestine at the invitation of Ras Tafari and served as his Royal Imperial Brass Band. The band became integral to Addis Ababa’s music scene and to the development of Ethio-jazz; its leader, Kevork Nalbandian, composed the first Ethiopian national anthem, premiered at the coronation of the prince who became Emperor Haile Selassie I. The film restages the club as an austere, dreamlike environment, played on horns built from discarded brass instruments, cut apart and reassembled.

Commissioned by Kaunas Biennial, 2023
Directed by: Andrius Arutiunian
Starring: Anastasia Sosunova, Andrius Arutiunian, Yonamine
Videography: Eitvydas Doškus
Costumes: Deimantė Bulbenkaitė
Set design: Antanas Gerlikas
Colour grading: Julija Steponaitytė
Sound recording: Arūnas Zujus
With special thanks to: Alicia Knock, Inga Lāce, Neringa Kulik