Arpine Hovasapian
On a beautiful starry Hollywood night, the Arpa Foundation for Film, Music, and Art opened its 11th annual Arpa International film festival in the heart of Hollywood at the historic Egyptian Theatre. Crowds of film fanatics, students, professionals and celebrities attended the three-day weekend red carpet event.
Throughout the weekend, the festival featured over 50 films, documentaries, shorts, and music videos that were selected from hundreds of entries submitted. The selections came from over 21 different countries, keeping in line with Arpa’s mission to support the arts and promote awareness and consciousness of important social and cultural issues.
On opening night, J. Michael Hagopian, an Emmy award winning director and genocide survivor, debuted his film The River Ran Red. The 60 minute documentaryis Hagopian’s seventh film about the Armenian Genocide, his 70th documentary, and a result of his 40 years of interviews with over 400 genocide survivors.
The film features stories of genocide survival and tragedy, taking the audience on a journey to find the last survivors of the genocide and hear their stories. Hagopian celebrated his 95th birthday at the Arpa film festival and stated that he plans to make more documentaries.
The weekend featured filmmakers of various types. New filmmaker Sevak Ohanian’s My Big Fat Armenian Family, a comedy about the experiences of an Armenian family finding their place in a new country, were able to screen their movie for a wide audience.
“The festival was extremely well put together,” Ohanian stated, “The director, Alex Kalognomos, did a great job of organizing the event and making sure it ran smoothly. I commend him for supporting Armenian artists and filmmakers and giving us a venue to showcase our hard work.”
Ohanian continued, “I am truly grateful that I was given the opportunity to have ‘My Big Fat Armenian Family’ participate and consider it a honor to have been a part of the prestigious festival. I’m already looking forward to next year’s Arpa Film Festival and cannot wait to see what other Armenian filmmakers have in store for us.”
The award for Best Feature Film went to Strength and Honour, written, directed, and also produced by Mark Mahon. The film stars Michael Madsen as an Irish- American boxer who moves in with a clan of Irish gypsies.
Other distinguished awards were given to Christopher Bessette for Best Director (The Enemy God), Hyun Oh for Best Documentary Film (Kungfu English), Tadeh Daschi for Best Music Video (Visa- Breakout the Violins), and the Shammasian Brothers for Best Short Film (Romans 12:20.)
The three day festival concluded with a star-studded Awards Ceremony on Sunday night honoring a few exceptional film contributors. The honorees included actress and human rights activist Mary Apick who was given the “Arpa Foundation Award” and actor Marco Khan who was presented the “Break-through Artist of the Year” award.
The event was a glowing success bringing to light many new and veteran filmmakers. The Arpa Foundation for Film, Music and Art, named after the river in Armenia, was founded in 1995 with the mission to promote the arts and enhance the cultural environment of the community.
For more information, please visit www.affma.org.
1 comment:
Thank you for the shout out in your blog. Looking forward to your next work! -Alex
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