Author: Manouk Vasilian

Creative Space Beirut (CSB), Lebanon’s first free fashion school, was founded by Lebanese-Armenian fashion designer Sarah Hermez, reports.

The school is inconspicuously housed in a run-of-the-mill, weathered apartment building tucked in a corner of the raucous neighborhood of Mar Mikhael — the capital’s capital of cool, generously lined with characterful bars and eateries, home to many an engaging art and design studio. The ambitious CSB, founded in 2011, operates out of an average-sized flat, its spatial modesty belying the bountiful tutelage it offers.

A nonprofit, CSB runs a three-year program catering to students from underprivileged backgrounds. It relies primarily on the generosity of donors for sustainability and it admits only four new students a year, choosing to offer a compact cohort a fulfilling experience rather than overreaching and providing more students with less.

“Design education has become institutionalized, and more about how much money you have than talent,” said the initiative’s founder, 29-year-old Kuwait bred, Lebanese-Armenian fashion designer Sarah Hermez. “Back in the day, designers would go work under others and build their way up, but today without a degree it’s impossible to get a job. We’re trying to provide equal opportunities to people who don’t have access to the elitist world of design.”

A product of the unconventional academic coupling of fashion design and media/cultural studies at the New School’s Parsons School of Design and the New School’s Eugene Lang College for Liberal Arts in New York, Hermez graduated wanting to do more than “fashion for fashion’s sake.”

Her desire to merge her zeal for social work with her love for fashion motivated her to move back to her native Lebanon. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” she said, “but I knew there was so much work to be done here.” She worked in the textile department of a boutique furniture store, taught preschool to Palestinian refugees and explored other opportunities within the very different worlds of NGO work and design, but nothing fit quite right.

Then, during a visit to New York, a conversation with her former professor, Lebanese-American designer Caroline Shlala-Simonelli, sparked what Hermez called “the American light bulb moment — that ‘aha’ moment Oprah talks about.” After listening to Hermez articulate the desire to marry her passions, and her frustration with not knowing how to do so, Simonelli suggested she start her own, free school. She even offered to help her do it.

Luckily, Hermez and her fledgling initiative were extended a number of supportive hands. A friend from Donna Karan in NY donated $100,000 worth of fabric for the future students to work with. “We had fabric and a professor but we needed a school,” she recalled. “It was my job to make that happen.”

Hermez hopes to eventually grow CSB into a school for all manners of design, not just fashion, believing that marginalized communities can greatly benefit from the problem-solving skills the discipline imparts.

President Serzh Sargsyan today sent a condolence letter on Kirk Kerkorian’s demise which reads as follows: “It was with great sorrow that I learned of the passing away of the great Armenian benefactor Kirk Kerkorian, the National Hero of Armenia.

I am sure everybody in Armenia, Artsakh and the diaspora share this sorrow. As an entrepreneur and businessman, he became a legend already in his lifetime and enjoyed international acclaim, setting an example of a revived Armenian and of a hard-working, wise, kind and modest man.

It was his Lincy Foundation that backed the Armenian people during hard times, helping them to overcome difficulties and embark on their path to development. The projects implemented by the foundation gave a breath of powerful fresh air to Armenia’s economy, seriously changing the nature of our country.

I strongly belief that the bright memory of the great Armenian and the National Hero of Armenia will live forever, and our people will remember him with a sense of pride and gratitude.

I condole with all of us in this great loss.”

On June 6, President Serzh Sargsyan received French Culture Minister Fleur Pellerin in Cannes. RA Culture Minister Hasmik Poghosyan also participated in the meeting. Issues were discussed related to cultural cooperation between Armenia and France.

President Serzh Sargsyan expressed his satisfaction with the concert of the Armenian World Orchestra which took place in April at the Théâtre du Châtelet. Serzh Sargsyan expressed the hope that the temporary orchestra of the world’s best musicians of Armenian descent will continue with concerts aimed at commemorating the Armenian Genocide victims and paying tribute to their memory.

The Armenian side offered to open an exhibition of Armenian surrealist painters in France. It also offered to continue with Armenian-French film co-production, the best examples of which are the films by Robert Guédiguian. The parties agreed to organize a festival which will feature co-produced movies.

The Armenian and French culture ministers reported to the RA president on their intention to promote collaboration on the above-mentioned issues.

A Kurdish businessman, who has previously failed in bids to purchase Liverpool and Vicenza football clubs, is attempting to take control of a Spanish team for the next football season, reports.

Syrian Kurd Yahya Kurdi has declined to reveal the name of the club saying, “The negotiations continue and we have agreed not to reveal the name of the club until the deal is done.

“My lawyers are working on the legal process now, and if I fail to purchase the club completely, I hope to own a majority share.”

Kurdi looks to models of successful ownership in the English Premier League for inspiration. “Manchester City F.C is a good example and the owner of the club, Mansour bin Zayed, has been successful in developing his club; not only with good players, but also wise management to better the team.”

Explaining his failure to purchase Liverpool F.C, Kurdi said that the club owed over £300 million which caused the negotiations to break down.

Kurdi now lives in Canada. He is the son of a Kurdish Muslim father and an Armenian Christian mother, and played football in various Arab leagues.

President Serzh Sargsyan attended today the opening ceremony of the Hayastan Cinema in the administrative district of Malatia-Sebastia. During the tour, the Armenian president familiarized himself with the cinema the renovation of which had started in 2013 and the opportunities of the modern family entertainment center (cinema, playrooms, music entertainment center) created as a result of eight-million-dollar investments.

The center also includes food outlets and cafeterias for family relaxation. According to the executives, the music entertainment center is to open in two to three months. In parallel with the cinema renovation, one-hectare area of the adjacent park has also been improved where around 500 trees of different varieties have been planted, the lighting system of both the park and the building has been completely redesigned and the fountains in the park have been renovated.

The center will also implement charitable projects and organize training courses for young cinematographers and experts in technical cinematography.

This year, the cinema will open its doors to the participants of the Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival: the movies selected for the festival will be shown, the participating directors and actors will be hosted, discussions will be held and movies will be watched.

 

OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and Serbia’s Foreign Minister Ivica Dačić will visit Armenia on 3 June 2015. He will meet President Serzh Sargsyan, Speaker of Parliament Galust Sahakyan and Minister of Foreign Affairs Edward Nalbandian, as well as members of leading political parties, and visit the OSCE Office in Yerevan.

Dačić and Nalbandian will hold a joint press conference on Wednesday, 3 June at 11.00 AM at the building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Minister of National Defense of Cyprus Christoforos Fokaides will arrive in Armenia on May 27 for an official visit.

Within the Framework of the visit Christoforos Fokaides will meet with Arfmenian Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan. The meeting will be followed by consultations with the participation of the delegation of the two countries.

The 2015 Military Cooperation Plan will be signed between the two countries.

King’s daughters, Patty King and Karen Williams, made the accusations in separate, but identically worded, affidavits filed over the weekend.

“I believe my father was poisoned and that he was administered foreign substances to induce his premature death,” they said in their affidavits. “I believe my father was murdered.”

King died May 14 in home hospice care in Las Vegas at age 89.

No investigation was conducted at the time of his death. And King’s attending physician listed the cause as multi-infarct dementia, which is caused by a series of small strokes.

But the daughter’s say that two of King’s associates gave him medication to induce diabetic shock.

John Fudenberg, the coroner for Clark County, Nevada, told CNN that initial autopsy results found “no evidence to substantiate the allegations.” But full forensic results will take six to eight weeks.

 

 

 

Armenian singer Hayk Mkhoyan has returned with golden medals from the VI Bulgarian National Championship of Folklore “Euro Folk 2015” and the “Voices of the Time 2015” folk festivals held in Bulgaria from May 7 to 17. The festivals featured participants from about 60 countries.

Mkhoyan was conferred an award in the “Individual Performance” category after he impressed the jury with a cappella performance of “Horovel” by Komitas.

This was the first time Armenia participated in this international festival, which has been held for eight years now.

“The songs I performed (“Krunk,” “Horovel,” “Dle Yaman”) were translated so that the listeners and the jury can understand their meaning, and as a result reference was made to the Armenian Genocide,” Hayk Mkhoyan told a press conference today.

According to him, it was important to raise the issue of the Armenian Genocide from an international podium, especially in the presence of the Turkish delegation,” he said.

The singer believes this international competition will open new perspectives of cooperation. He has already received an invitation to participate in the world folk championship.

Charles Aznavour celebrates his 91st birthday today. The legendary French Armenian singer, who wrote more than 800 songs, recorded more than 1,000 of them in French, English, German and Spanish and sold over 100 million records in all, was born Chahnour Vaghinag Aznavourian on May 22, 1924, in Paris, the younger of two children born to Armenian immigrants who fled to France. His mother was a seamstress as well as an actress and his father was a baritone who sang in restaurants. Both Charles and his sister waited on tables where he performed. He delivered his first poetic recital while just a toddler. Within a few years later he had developed such a passion for singing/dancing, that he sold newspapers to earn money for lessons.

He took his first theatrical bow in the play “Emil and the Detectives” at age 9 and within a few years was working as a movie extra. He eventually quit school and toured France and Belgium as a boy singer/dancer with a traveling theatrical troupe while living the bohemian lifestyle. A popular performer at the Paris’ Club de la Chanson, it was there that he was introduced in 1941 to the songwriter Pierre Roche. Together they developed names for themselves as a singing/writing cabaret and concert duo (“Roche and Aznamour”). A Parisian favorite, they became developed successful tours outside of France, including Canada. In the post WWII years Charles began appearing in films again, one of them as a singing croupier in Goodbye Darling (1946).

Eventually Aznavour earned a sturdy reputation composing street-styled songs for other established musicians and singers, notably Édith Piaf, for whom he wrote the French version of the American hit “Jezebel”. Heavily encouraged by her, he toured with her as both an opening act and lighting man. He lived with Piaf out of need for a time not as one of her many paramours. His mentor eventually persuaded him to perform solo (sans Roche) and he made several successful tours while scoring breakaway hits with the somber chanson songs “Sur ma vie” and “Parce que” and the notable and controversial “Après l’amour.” In 1950, he gave the bittersweet song “Je Hais Les Dimanches” [“I Hate Sundays”] to chanteuse Juliette Gréco, which became a huge hit for her.

In the late 50s, Aznavour began to infiltrate films with more relish. Short and stubby in stature and excessively brash and brooding in nature, he was hardly leading man material but embraced his shortcomings nevertheless. Unwilling to let these faults deter him, he made a strong impressions with the comedy Une gosse sensass’ (1957) and with Paris Music Hall (1957). He was also deeply affecting as the benevolent but despondent and ill-fated mental patient Heurtevent in Head Against the Wall (1959). A year later, Aznavour starred as piano player Charlie Kohler/Edouard Saroyan in ‘Francois Truffaut”s adaptation of the David Goodis’ novel Shoot the Piano Player (1960) [Shoot the Piano Player], which earned box-office kudos both in France and the United States. This sudden notoriety sparked an extensive tour abroad in the 1960s. Dubbed the “Frank Sinatra of France” and singing in many languages (French, English, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, Armenian, Portuguese), his touring would include sold-out performances at Carnegie Hall (1964) and London’s Albert Hall (1967).

Aznavour served as actor and composer/music arranger for many films, including Gosse de Paris (1961), which he also co-wrote with directorMarcel Martin, and the dramas Three Fables of Love (1962) [Three Fables of Love”) and Dear Caroline (1968) [Dear Caroline]. The actor also embraced the title role in the TV series “Les Fables de la Fontaine” (1964), then starred in the popular musical “Monsieur Carnaval” (1965), in which he performed his hit song “La bohême.”

His continental star continued to shine and Aznavour acted in films outside of France with more dubious results. While the sexy satire Candy(1968), with an international cast that included Marlon Brando, Richard Burton and Ringo Starr, and epic adventure The Adventurers (1969) were considered huge misfires upon release, it still showed Aznavour off as a world-wide attraction. While he was also seen in the English drama _Games, The (1970), _Blockhouse, The (1973) and an umpteenth film version of Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians (1974) [And Then There Were None/Ten Little Indians], it was his music that kept him in the international limelight. Later films included Yiddish Connection (1986), which he co-wrote and provided music, and Il maestro (1990) with Malcolm McDowell; more recently he received kudos for his participation in the Canadian-French production Ararat (2002).

Films aside, hus chart-busting single “She” (1972-1974) went platinum in Britain. He also received thirty-seven gold albums in all. His most popular song in America, “Yesterday When I Was Young” has had renditions covered by everyone from Shirley Bassey to Julio Iglesias. In 1997, Aznavour received an honorary César Award. He has written three books, the memoirs “Aznavour By Aznavour” (1972), the song lyrics collection “Des mots à l’affiche” (1991) and a second memoir “Le temps des avants” (2003). A “Farewell Tour” was instigated in 2006 at age 82 and, health permitting, could last to 2010.

In 2009 Aznavour was appointed Armenia’s Ambassador to Switzerland.