Two of Our Films Nominated in France

Two of our films, The Third Rider and Dinner Time (which you can watch on our website right now, by the way) are included in Oriental Express program of Aye-Aye International Film Festival, France.

The festival will take place in the beginning of September in Nancy. The screening day of The Third Rider is already set; it is September 9th, 19:00. Hopefully, I will attend it personally.

Although only 3-minute-long Dinner Time has been really successful since it was made in 2006 (it was even nominated in IDFA, the biggest documentary film festival in the world) and has a large list of awards already, we can’t tell the same about The Third Rider, which, unfortunately, didn’t travel much because of its controversial content. Let’s hope this event will change that tendency.

Temporary Pause in the Filming at the Border

Those of you, who follow our activities here and on our Facebook page, have probably noticed a strange silence from us for the last couple of days (I don’t count the detailed comments on Mush’s boots). That is because our shootings are temporarily stopped here, and we are very sorry to admit that. We need to return back to Yerevan for several days and restart shootings later.

The thing is, although the preparation for this shootings took several months, we ran out of clean socks we still have faced some unexpected and really serious problems, which made us to postpone the shootings in order not to risk the whole film, which is being produced for half a year already.

Anyway, this is not the first obstacle we faced during this project. This is one of the most complicated films we ever worked on, and major and minor problems with authorities and not only were appearing every now and then. Filming on the border, especially on a border which is at the center of the world’s political attention now, is risky, challenging and, yes, quite dangerous, too. But we haven’t given up, and the shootings hopefully are going to go on in the beginning of August, all of us are doing our best to make that happen.

I strongly believe that problems and obstacles make the film more interesting, and I’m sure that at the end we are going to have a piece of work our studio can be really proud of.

Filming goes on

Second day of filming on Turkish borders went really well. We met new people, visited the family who probably are going to be the main characters of the Turkish part of the film, filmed the fair of villages that takes place every summer. The latter was basically a party in the middle of a deserted area with some hundreds of people. People were drinking, dancing and singing, and of course, everything ended with a huge fight, where everyone was happy to take a part. We managed to drive away just in time.

We also visited Turkish “yailas” (tent villages, where people take their animals in summers), filmed a very interesting conversation in a tent, where we heard a lot of new facts and stories about the relations of the two villages we are filming in. The fact that they don’t know where we come from makes it more interesting, as they are being really honest.

The day was interesting and quite full, although the unstable weather and the strong wind made everything a bit more difficult. But the trip goes on, and every day promises to be more exciting than the previous one.

More photos.

First Day of the Trip to Turkey

Driving to Kars took a little longer than a day because of the long stops at the borders of Georgia and Turkey. We arrived late after midnight and left for the location next morning with Nesra Gurbuz, our executive producer from Istanbul. I will not tell you about the incident with not knowing about the 2-hour time difference between Yerevan and Kars and demanding breakfast at the hotel somewhere at 6 in the morning, as it’s a shame, and nobody should know about it!

Finally, we visited the Turkish village we were watching from the other side of the border for the last few months. Was quite an unusual feeling. We met different interesting people and heard some interesting opinions, although we didn’t hope to get much on our first visit.

Not knowing the language causes difficulties, but makes all the process more challenging, especially when it comes to dealing with local military forces. The next several days are going to be full of interesting and intense shootings and trips.

And, what is really important, we didn’t forget to take a photo camera with us (I know, I can’t believe it either), and we even remembered to take a charger, unlike the last time. So no more cell-phone-made photos. Mush is taking care of it. Somebody should finally stop David though, he keeps posting them on Facebook like a maniac.

Check back every day, it’s going to be exciting. Neighbors going to a new level.

More photos.

Green Day #3

One more interesting educational meeting at our place; we hosted Allen Hughes, a famous American filmmaker, the director of such hit movies as The Book of Eli and From Hell, and who has worked with Denzel Washington, Johny Depp, Gary Oldman and others.

The filmmaker met both the studio members and most of the students of Manana Center, talked about his own experience in film industry, difficulties he met during his career, working experience with big movie stars, filmmaking world in Hollywood in general, and, of course, about his Armenian mother, who had a big influence on his artistic life.

After the workshop most of us were invited to attend the screening of The Book of Eli together with the director.

Allen Hughes was a great person to meet with, very honest, funny and highly experienced in his sphere. We’ll do our best to get more and more interesting people of film industry to visit our studio and do a workshop for us.

Yes, who has Steven Spielberg’s e-mail address, by the way?

P.S. Once again, for those who don’t know; Green Days are the days we have a meeting with someone who works in film industry and who was invited to share his experience with us.

Green Day #1

Green Day #2

Another Armenia Turkey Cinema Platform Workshop

Those of you, who live in Armenia or are visiting the country these days, know that Golden Apricot International Film Festival, the biggest cinema event of Armenia has started. Unfortunately, our studio has no films in the program this year, as our main projects are still in progress. Anyway, we were looking forward to the festival, because there is always lot of interesting things going on during it, and it’s a huge fun.

In frames of the festival, another workshop of ATCP (Armenia Turkey Cinema Platform), an initiative of Golden Apricot and Anadolu Kultur from Turkey, has started. This platform was created to support and encourage the cooperation of Armenian and Turkish filmmakers and producers, and it’s growing bigger every year.

If you follow our news (and you should, of course), then you remember that our Neighbors project was applied and won additional funding in frames of ATCP in April of this year in Istanbul. That is why on the first day of this month’s workshop I presented the project to the new applicants, as well as to the organizers and special guests. The film will be a part of the next year’s Golden Apricot FF program.

Besides, our studio will host some of the filmmaker guests of the festival this week, who kindly agreed to do short workshops for us and for the younger students of Manana Center.

Enjoy the festival and try to watch as many films as you can. It’s a pity most of us are going to miss the last part of it, as we’re leaving for Turkey at the end of this week, to go on with filming the Neighbors.

Some links, in case if you missed;

Project Pitching in Istanbul

Press Conference for Neighbors Project

ATCP in other media (those I could find):

Panarmenian.net - English, Armenian

Tert.am - English, Armenian

Moving a Mountain: filming almost done

The filming for Moving a Mountain is almost done. Asheer has finally finished his work, the sculpture is ready and waiting for the big guys’ decision. The result is beyond all my expectations, and now I am glad I have never seen the sketches of it before.

Now, the most important moment is still to come; soon it will be clear where the sculpture will be placed.

Meanwhile, the filming process for this project comes to its end. Here are a couple of more stills from the materials.