THIS YEAR DOCUMENTARIES PREVAIL IN GOLDEN APRICOT’S ARMENIAN PANORAMA
CONTEST PROGRAM
NOYAN TAPAN
JU LY 17
Four young Armenian-based and Diasporan directors taking part in
Golden Apricot’s Armenian Panorama contest program spoke about their
films and festival at the July 17 meeting with journalists.
Introducing one Armenian-based and three Diasporan cinematographic
figures, Mikayel Stamboltsian, programs director of the Golden Apricot
(Voske Tsiran) 5th International Film Festival, said that this year
fiction films are few in the Armenian Panorama contest program and
instead the number of documentaries is unprecedentedly large.
French Armenian Varant and Khazhak Soudjian brothers take part in the
documentary film genre contest in Golden Apricot, presenting the films
The Second Wind and July in Ltchap. They take part in this Yerevan
festival for the first time and hope that it will not be be the last
one. Soudjian brothers’ films tell about life and human relationship
revealing the fates and individuals, who are usually unnoticeable.
The Second Wind is Varant’s third film in this genre. It is
about a young pickpocket, whose last adventure becomes fatal and
turning. Khazhak Soudjian has shot his 18-minute film July in Ltchap
for both Armenian-based and Diasporan Armenians. "I tried to present
real Armenia for everybody," the author said. The village of Ltchap
near Sevan has appeared in a grave situation after the collapse of
Soviet system: the young director made an attempt to bring to light
village’s real picture.
Problems of loneliness and lack of communication in Western Armenian
society are raised in the fiction film The Blue Hour of American-based
Erik Nazarian. Erik Nazarian was born in Armenia, but moved to the
U.S. at the age of 4. He graduated from the Cinema and Television
School of South Californian University. Before that the young
director had shot 4 films. The Blue Hour film is his first fiction
work. It is about people living on the bank of Los Angeles river,
who do not communicate with each other in any language and the only
thing connecting them is the river. The film is about four different
families, who appeared in loneliness and lack of communication. "One
of them communicates with its memory, the other with a picture, the
next with silence. People have become alien to each other and become
detached. It is a universal pain. In the era of high technologies
human relationship takes place in different ways except the human one,"
the author said.
The 24-minute film 36 Immortals by Yerevan-based doctor Hrachya
Vardanian is also interesting. The author is convinced that the
Armenian alphabet created at a fatal moment is more endangered today,
as worship of foreign things has become an idol for everyone and
everywhere.