IT TAKES A STEP FROM APRICOT TO DRIED APRICOT

Lragir.am
12 July 06

Though I tried hard, I could not imagine Condoleezza Rice entering
the Kodak Hall in Los Angeles or the French foreign minister walking
on the red rug in Cannes, or Lavrov entering the hall of the film
festival of Moscow. They appeared to me in interstate meetings,
heated international talks, diplomatic battles. I did not try to
imagine foreign minister Vardan Oskanyan walking on the rug of the
film festival. I did not need to because I could simply see that on
July 10, at 21 o’clock in the evening, in front of the Moscow Cinema,
on the red rug of the Golden Apricot Festival.

Vardan Oskanyan did not appear there accidentally. Perhaps only the
organizers of the festival knew about Vardan Oskanyan’s relation to
cinema, world cinema generally (because the festival is international)
and Armenian cinema particularly. It should be noted, however, that
Vardan Oskanyan did not look lost among renowned and not so renowned
directors. Moreover, for a moment it appeared as if the passer was
not the blacksmith of native diplomacy but one of the prominent
representatives of the native film industry. And it is difficult to
state which of them suffered much, cinema or diplomacy, when Vardan
Oskanyan chose cinema as his main occupation.

Although this should not be uttered absolutely. After all, it is not
surprising when at an important and maybe even crucial moment for the
country’s foreign policies we see the foreign minister on the rug of
the festival, not at the table of negotiations. They kill Armenians
in Russia, Iran demands account for the sale of the gas pipeline,
Verin Lars is again closed down, Karabakh talks are declassified,
whereas the foreign minister attends to the festival.

Apricots are good, especially at the end of the season, especially
when the border between diplomacy and cinema is not visible. But
Lavrov knows something when he does not walk on festival rugs. On
the other hand, it is possible that he does not know anything, but
he has a lot to do and there is no time for rugs. Well, they are big
countries, they have problems, interests, goals. Therefore they go
in for diplomacy. Ours is apricots, it is good if they sell well,
at least the dried apricots.

HAKOB BADALYAN