
Quiet rituals, comforts of daily life, memory flickers through grainy traces. Time quietly slips away. Peace, at times, is merely the absence of war.
With the voice-over reading from the poems of Armenian author Tatev Chakhian, WE LIVED SLOWLY IN TIMES OF PEACE is a thoughtful lesson of filmmaking in verse, a reminder of the most humanistic aspect of cinema, which is not to make-believe, but to document, for better or for worse. For better, as seen in the luminous home movies from the Prelinger archive used by Jacot, with their dozens of anonymous smiles and touches, and for worse, in a painfully technical, impersonal video recording of a bombing in Stepanakert during the 44-day war in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020. As our century becomes an audiovisual archive of the pain of others, we increasingly need new sensibilities and lucidities of seeing such as those of this film. (Călin Boto)

Kristina Jacot is an artist, filmmaker and cultural worker, interested in DIY approaches and building “false” structures that can fulfill real needs, even if only temporarily. She is a co-founder of the Bioksop cine-club and a member of the Casa Zemstvei community in Chișinău.