Growing Up in a Trouble Spot
By Anna Malpas
Moscow Times, Russia
June 23 2006
Moscow International Film Festival
"The Lighthouse" was shot on location in Armenia.
Passengers at an Armenian train station in Maria Saakyan’s film "The
Lighthouse" are confronted with a handwritten sign saying "there is
no train." Ironically, the director had the same problem when she
traveled from Moscow to shoot the wistful war drama on location.
"During the war, they took apart the rails and never put them
together again," the 25-year-old director said after a press
screening of her film at Mosfilm on Wednesday. That made transporting
camera equipment to Armenian mountain villages "very expensive," she
said.
The film, which is taking part in the Perspectives section of the
Moscow International Film Festival, is the debut feature for Saakyan,
a graduate of Moscow’s VGIK film school. Its story of a girl visiting
her grandparents in Armenia, then finding herself unable to leave
because of war, is one that is close to the director, who fled her
native Yerevan at age 12.
"That little piece of earth is very dear to me," she said, recalling
that when her family left Armenia in the 1990s, she begged them to
let her stay. "I don’t know whether I managed to convey that feeling,
that emotion, at least a little bit."
While she talked, her young daughter pleaded with her for candy, and
Saakyan spoke of her feeling that she would never return to live in
Armenia. "Now, I realize that I can’t go back because I already have
my family here, I had my education here. … I have opportunities to
work here."
The film’s screenwriter, 27-year-old VGIK student Givi Shavgulidze,
drew on similar experiences, since he was forced to leave Abkhazia in
the early 1990s. "He can’t get back to his house at all because now
there are other people living there," Saakyan said.
"The Lighthouse" remains vague about which Caucasus conflict it
depicts, although its apparent subtext is the war between Armenia and
Azerbaijan over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Saakyan
stressed that the story was not about a specific war. "In the 1990s,
there was a war in Georgia, there was a war in Armenia. … The whole
of the former Soviet Union was covered in hot spots."
The film stars veteran actors as Armenian villagers, including Sofiko
Chiaureli, who acted in Sergei Paradzhanov’s "Color of Pomegranates,"
and Sos Sarkisyan, who played a doctor in "Solaris" by Andrei
Tarkovsky. "They all agreed very quickly when they heard what the
film was about," the director said. "They also care about this
theme."
The film received a grant from the Netherlands-based Hubert Bals
Fund, which supports up-and-coming filmmakers as part of the
Rotterdam film festival. It is the first full-length film for
Saakyan, who previously made an almost wordless short called "The
Farewell" that won several festival awards. She described "The
Lighthouse" as her "first attempt to work with words and a little bit
with history."
"The Lighthouse" plays Mon. at 6 p.m. and Tues. at 6 p.m. at Oktyabr,
located at 24 Novy Arbat. Metro Smolenskaya.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
