SECOND ARMENIAN FILM SERIES PREMIERES IN BOSTON
Andy Turpin

armenian-film-series-premieres-in-boston/
May 8, 2009

BOSTON, Mass. (A.W.)-On Fri., May 1, the Second Annual Armenian Film
Series premiered at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) to large scale
attendance by the greater Boston-area Armenian community. The Armenian
Dramatic Arts Alliance (ADAA) presented the event.

ADAA president Bianca Bagatourian introduced the film, saying, "It’s
so nice to see so many familiar faces… We’re very happy that this
film series fulfils the mission statement of the Armenian Dramatic
Arts Alliance so explicitly by helping spread Armenian culture across
the world stage."

This is a community effort and it’s really taken 10 years to get to
this point," said Paul Boghosian, a member of the events committee
and industrial advisory board. "Independent film is a very unique
area. As a director, you never know if you’ll get distribution or if
anyone will go see the film. And in our ultra-technological age it
can sometimes be easier to make the film than get it distributed."

The evening began with the screening of "Dinner Time," a one-minute
short by then-14-year old Gor Baghdasaryan from Armenia, the winner
of the Unicef Prize and presented by the Tufenkian Foundation and
the Manana Center for youth education and culture. A minute-long
film can say a thousand words about an Armenian village family’s
quality of everyday life and cohesion in an economically distraught
environment. And we can all look forward to great films to come as
the now-21-year-old Baghdasaryan ages and hones his film craft.

Next followed Eric Nazarian’s feature-length film "The Blue Hour," the
2008 winner of the Golden Apricot Prize. "The Blue Hour" is Nazarian’s
first feature film as a writer-director. Nazarian is a graduate of the
University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television. Born
in Armenia and raised in Los Angeles, he is currently working on a
law enforcement saga and an international drama about globalization.

As a film, "The Blue Hour" is hard to quantify because narratively it’s
a bit like measuring the amount of fluid in a sieve. Beautifully shot
and exquisitely acted, "The Blue Hour" is often compared to 2006’s Best
Picture winner "Crash," but that comparison is skin-deep to both films’
similar cinematography, sense of brooding sadness, and L.A. setting.

In truth, "The Blue Hour" is much more akin in its sense of
storytelling and disjointed lives to Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s 2006
film "Babel." A shortcoming of "The Blue Hour" is the fact that anyone
looking to find fault with the film could easily tell a friend thinking
of seeing it that, "Yeah, it’s kind of like a cross between ‘Crash’
and ‘Babel’ but without the race relations stuff but with Linc from
the ‘Mod Squad.’" A brief Q&A and light reception followed the event.