Mishik’s “balloon”

August 29, 2010

The RA Ministry of Culture in the person of its minister Hasmik Poghosyan and the movie committee formed by her allotted 19 million AMD for shooting a film, which doesn’t have a scenario or a plot. And I mean this in the literal meaning of the word. The conditional name of the film is “Walnut Tree or Beech or the Army Commander” and within the society it’s known by the title “Mishik’s film.” They mean the actor Michael Poghosyan, who in this case is considered as a phony scenario writer. The mentioned honored actor was able to “grab” some money from the state, which will be filmed not based on a plot but by impromptu and by the principle “we’ll see how that goes.” This story, which has quite interesting nuances, is quite outstanding because of the publicized data of the Ministry of Culture, according to which the budget of the film is 187 million AMD, a part of which Poghosyan was able to “get” from some Diaspora Armenians. The...

Egoyan’s lessons

July 20, 2010

On July 15 Canadian Armenian Atom Egoyan, the president of the Golden Apricot film festival, had a meeting with students in the national gallery. This person has his solid place in the world “cult” film production, and his meeting with students in Armenia looked more like a lecture. By the way, he did not get any professional education and he was born in a family of artists and liked to film from his childhood.   During the days of the Golden Apricot one can see Egoyan in the streets of Yerevan with a camera in his hands. During the meeting the film producer opened his secret. Two years ago he filmed some scenes in Yerevan with the same camera, and the presentation if his film “The illuminator” took place in the gallery. In fact it was a twenty-minute original movie (Ashot Adamyan was the lead actor) showing that how people can stray from the “truth” and certain rules to move forward in their life. “All of us have to compromise in this life,” says Egoyan....

Film production is the nation’s image

July 17, 2010

I was waiting for the godfather of the film production of Iceland Frederic Fredrickson in the hotel lobby. His contribution is very big, even though the show of one of his first short-length movies was failed and the film producer had to leave from Reykjavik. The reason why this movie was failed was the fact that Frederic tried to interpret the epos of Iceland in a non-traditional manner. His first full-length movie (1987) attracted the special attention of the jury at the movie festival of Locarno. He worked with famous scenario writers and specialists. Frederickson founded the first film journal in Iceland, was one of the authors of the movie festival of Reykjavik in 1978, represented Iceland at the Oscar festival for the first time, in 1990 established the most powerful film company in Iceland (Icelandic Film Corporation) and cooperates with a number of very important and famous companies. While I was thinking about all these achievements, he entered the hall of the hotel. During the conversation he was speaking...

Serzh Tankian’s beard according to Lenin and Tolstoy

June 15, 2010

On June 17 Serzh Tankian will have a concert in the Krakus City Hall of Moscow. Before his concert he gave an interview to the Russian edition of the Rolling Stone journal. - Whose image did inspire you to grow a beard? - Both Lenin and Tolstoy. Great people; I have always wanted to be like them. Even though I am very far from being Tolstoy. - Do you spend much time on looking after it?   - To be honest I don’t make many efforts on it. Sometimes I go to the hairdresser’s and while I am watching the “Southern garden” on TV, the stylist is doing a magic on my beard. - Does anybody call you “Serzh jan” like usually Armenians call the people they like? - Of course. But many people don’t know what it means and are using this word without a reason as they have heard it somewhere. - Does the fact that you re-issued the Elect The Dead album with the symphony orchestra mean that next time you may sing in the hall of the Conservatory? - Maybe, but I will not...

Arshile Gorky, “I am entering my reflexes”

April 27, 2010

I have seen many of the pieces of Arshile Gorky (Vostanik Adoyan) in museums of different countries and exhibitions, in which Gorky is presented in a worthy manner. He is considered one of the creators of surrealism (according to Andre Breton) and first of all American expressionism. Months ago I visited Kafesjian museum in Yerevan to view the pieces of Arshile Gorky that people have been speaking about so much. Indeed it is great that the founder of the museum J. Kafesjian was able to bring the pieces belonging to him to Armenia. However, the pieces of Gorky were demonstrated in a quite poor and unclear manner. The impression was that these pieces were the scratches of the artist or maybe some fragments of his main pieces. Those didn’t tell anything about this world-known artist. The exhibition didn’t have a conception either. Nonetheless, months ago, on February 10 the exhibition of Gorky’s pieces was moved to London Tate Modern museum from Philadelphia, USA. The exhibition will remain in...