Armenia

At only 14 years old, Aurora lost everything during the horror of the Armenian genocide. Four years later, through luck and extraordinary courage, she escaped to New York, where her story became a media sensation. Starring as herself in Auction of Souls, an early Hollywood blockbuster, Aurora became the face of one of the largest charity campaigns in American history. With a blend of vivid animation, interviews with Aurora herself, and 18 minutes of surviving footage from her lost silent epic, Aurora’s Sunrise revives a forgotten story of survival.Read More »

A film about the great Komitas, one of the victims of the Armenian Genocide, who wasn’t killed, but went crazy and kept silence for 20 years.

The central character is Edgar Novents, a well-known writer and lecturer on the Department of Journalism of the University. He is focused on writing a novel about Rev. Komitas, the great Armenian composer and musicologist, and this provides the bridge between the present and the past. Relying on historical facts, archived documents, psychological hypotheses, Edgar Novents tries to elicit the Paris period of Komitas’ life, to penetrate the enigma of the last years of life of the great son of the Armenian people in the Psychiatric hospital of Villejuif, to bring to light his Great Silence in a gentle and restrained way. To convey fidelity to his novel, The Great Silence, Edgar Novents is trying to share in and understand the sufferings of his literary hero. As a wellbornintellectual, Edgar Novents also is the chronicler of his time, he is always in the focus of modern events, which have been so much shaped by the horrors of the past.Read More »

The first movie to be directed by Stepan Andranikyan, better known as Sergei Parajanov’s art director. Based on a story by Andranikyan’s neighbour, it was originally meant to be entirely wordless, but officials insisted he add a narrative poem explaining the story about the love between Astghik, the star of the night, and the young sun Vahagn.

Sources differ on the year of release, with Armenian ones (including Kinodaran) saying 1971 and Russian ones (including animator.ru) saying 1972. It won 2nd prize in the animation category at the All-Union Film Festival in Alma-Ata, Kazakh SSR, 1973.Read More »

Today, Mel Divan is a successful American businessman with a terminal illness. But long ago he was an infamous criminal who escaped from a mental institution in Communist Armenia. With the rise of capitalism, Mel returns to Armenia to make good on a promise to deliver the bounty of his robbery to the widow of a fellow thief. Mel plans on spending only enough time in Armenia to locate the widow. But nostalgia and fate drive him, as the same mental institution from which he escaped is now on the auction block. Mel buys it and finds refuge in running the psychiatric hospital while living among its eclectic residents and helping each in a unique way. Mel will live his final days as a saint provided he can keep one step ahead of the Chief Psychiatrist and a local Mob Boss.Read More »

In April (Armenia 1985), on the 70th anniversary of the genocide, on April 24, 1985, Vigen Chaldranyan stages a conversation between the generations in a mixture of comedy and bitter seriousness. As every year, the veterans talk about the days of the war. But while their sons can no longer hear all this, the grandchildren feel called upon to “solve the Armenian question”.Read More »

Tragic events in Armenian history are echoed in this incisive film. Arakel Eloyan, a survivor of the 1915 genocide, has built a new life with his family in Soviet Armenia.
Still, he longs to once again see his home village, now a part of Turkey. His nostalgic yearning pulls him across the Soviet border, but the Soviet government views his journey as a potential act of treason.Read More »

Vazgen, Sako, Suren and Aram are taxi drivers and close friends. When Aram fell in hopeless love with Karine, other three decide to help their friend.Read More »

The film is dedicated to the Armenian monk and genius composer Komitas, and the 2 million victims on his people in Turkey in 1915. The final 20 years of Komitas life were spent in various mental hospitals. The destiny of Komitas? This is the magic beauty of Armenian culture and the abhorrent brutality of Armenian history. A cultural and artistic world that was slaughtered with a curved knife. A humanity that doggedly advances towards an apocalyptic catastrophe, that does not recognize its own original purpose, eradicates its own memory, its final roots.Read More »

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The movie goes back to the beginning of the century. After the death of his unfaithful wife Heghnar, Master Mkrtich builds an unusual spring in her honour. Its water stops flowing as soon as a stranger approaches it. Only Mkrtich, her husband, can drink water from the spring.Read More »