Our studio is 1 year old

That’s right, happy birthday, Manana Youth Films, you’re 1 year old now! Although our core crew has been working together for much longer than a year, the studio was officially founded a year ago.

Usually, when you hear about some “youth studio”, it’s either a small production organization founded and sponsored by a film college, which produces one or two shorts per year (usually the diploma works of the students), or it’s a place where film students gather, but never produce anything, although keep calling it a studio.

About a year ago we had an idea of starting an independent organization, where young filmmakers will work on projects that other studios may not risk to take, a place that will challenge the classic production companies by its own new way of running visual arts business. A place where ambitious young professionals (or non-professionals), which share our philosophy of filmmaking, will get a solid platform to speak up.

And during this year we’ve achieved quite a lot. MYF is known in most of the film festivals, including the biggest film events, it has partners and friends among many companies around the world that work in different spheres of film and media industry, our films have been screened and broadcasted worldwide, our filmmakers right now simultaneously work on a number of very different projects, from full-length documentaries to experimental shorts, we invite the best professionals both from Armenia and abroad to give their advice to us during the work. We also managed to be announced wanted by an international security system (you know how it’s called), get arrested, sued (proven not guilty) and drive national securities nuts.

And now I can proudly announce that Manana Youth Films is one of the most successful independent youth film studios in the world. We have a pile of the most ambitious plans of conquering the galaxy, this first year was just a small percent of what we intend to do in this sphere.

For one more time, thanks to Manana Youth Center, where most of our filmmakers studied while being teenagers; a place where you learn to break all the possible boundaries, a magic factory where kids realize that crazy ideas worth living for.

Thanks to all the people that believed in us since the very beginning and has been crazy enough to support our ideas. You won’t regret it.

Happy birthday!

Paper Garden on UN TV

Great news concerning Paper Garden again; UN TV starts the distribution of our film in frames of 21st Century, their monthly newsmagazine featuring human-interest stories in a dynamic, field-oriented style. This means that the film is going to be broadcasted by most of the major TV companies around the world; UN TV provides media content to the three main syndicators - APTN, Reuters and the European Broadcasting Union, which basically means the film is going to be broadcasted almost everywhere around the globe.

Just in case anyone didn’t get it right; it’s a big deal.

The film has been specially re-edited for it, we made some extra shootings for it, and although it reminds more a news video report now, but, hey, now the whole world is going to see it! Special thanks to ListenUp! and Austin Haeberle, who made the thing happen.

The film is available online now, although it’s the changed version, with TV-style narration. Have a look at it here.

What’s up #2

How are you doing? It’s been a while, eh? It’s time for another short news digest from the studio, isn’t it?

Let’s start from the Neighbors then. This film suffered a lot during this year, it truly deserves a title of an epic project; since January we’ve been filming for it on the most tough places, working with three different armies, dealing with all the power structures both in Armenia and Turkey, and the filming crew went through all kind of international scandals, detentions and trials.

But the work still goes on, we made another trip to the borders this month, another trip is coming up, so, hopefully, not much left to wait.

Asheer Akram, the great sculptor from our latest film, Moving a Mountain, has presented both his work done in Armenia and the film to the public in USA recently. As he claims, the presentation went very well. I will post the photos and more details from the event as soon as we get them.

In the meantime, more interesting stuff is coming up; two short fiction film projects will start in December, besides, soon we start a production of a short film series consisting of three short videos. As always, you can follow the progress of making them on our Current Projects page; not a single studio provides its audience with that kind of opportunity, so a warm thank you would be nice.

And some more news; I’ve spent another week this month working as a trainer in a filmmaking workshop in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, organized by OneMinutesJr. and UNICEF. This time the participants were Kyrgyz and Uzbek teenagers, representatives of the two biggest ethnic groups of this region. As you may know, this city was one of the hottest zones of conflict between these two groups this year, that is why the subject of the workshop was, obviously, peace. All the participants had a tragic experience during this conflict, and all of their wishes and dreams were about living in peace. Each of the teenagers produced a one-minute-long film during the workshop. If you’re interested, check out Chris Schuepp’s online diary of the workshop (as well as of the previous ones).

Ok, that’s enough for today. As you see, lots of stuff is going on here. So I better stop writing and go back to work.

Seagulls used in a Polish film

Some fragments from one of our older short films, Seagulls, made in 2004, has recently been used in a Polish short documentary video made by Servimedia.

Seagulls was filmed in a hazardous waste in Nubarashen, Armenia, which is considered to be a huge ecological threat for Armenia.

A Polish company called EcoTech has implemented a revolutionary technology of safe disposal of dangerous substances. Armenia is one of the countries the company works in, trying to prevent the ecological disaster.

This 4-minute-long film featuring some fragments from Seagulls tells about that invention. Now the film is going to travel around the world with high-positioned politicians to promote the technology.

Moving a Mountain released

Moving a Mountain, the film that we’ve been working on since April 2010, is finally ready.

It took three months of shootings and two months of post-production, including sound and music design and color correction.

The 20-minute-long film shows Asheer Akram, an American sculptor, originally from Pakistan, that came to Armenia to make a metal sculpture, which should embody his impressions about Armenian culture, history, lifestyle, as well as his ideas about current situation of Armenia. What makes it really interesting, is that this is his first visit to Armenia, a country he knew nothing about before, and he has only four months to finish his work.

The film is very interesting, dynamic and entertaining. Another cool piece from your favorite Manana Youth Films. Go ahead and check out the short fragment from the film, just to get a general idea of what the film looks like.

The questions concerning film’s distribution are still being discussed, that is why it’s not available for public viewing yet, unless you are a close friend of ours and can knock on the studio door and beg on your knees ask for a private screening. If you’re not a friend, you better do your best do become one, believe me!

New Website Thing #3

As you may have noticed, the website was down for a couple of days; we were changing the design of some of the pages, and the database was damaged during the testings (don’t ask me why, ok?).

Moush, our cruel web-mastermind, was working day and night to finish the planned changes and recover the website. And here is a short description of what has been changed; both films and current projects are now much more integrated with the blog. Which means, if you open, let’s say, Moving a Mountain page, you may always see what are the latest news on the blog concerning this exact project. Besides, you can look through all the photos, videos and awards of the project in separate albums. And there are some minor changes all over the website, for example, you can have basic technical information about each film on its right sidebar (more detailed technical info will be available for every film when our online store is ready).

All these improvements will let you follow the progress of every current project we work on much closer and get all the latest updates on films and projects that interest you. Although I know that you are interested in every single thing that happens at the studio, aren’t you?

Coming soon: a separate page that will bring together all the videos available on the website; films, trailers, teasers and production videos (yes, we are going to make those from time to time now, too).

You see, we do our best to make it easy and fun for you to find any needed information here. Aren’t we the nicest studio ever?

Paper Garden Awarded in 01SJ Biennal

One of our films, Paper Garden, was awarded in a film competition organized by Adobe Foundation and ZER01. The film was featured as a part of the 2010 01SJ Biennal.

Paper Garden is a short documentary showing the environmental situation in Yerevan. The film was made for the Beyond Green international film series of ListenUp! and Adobe Youth Voices.

Not bad folks, eh? For the third time this month, congratulations to us!