Third Yerevan "Golden Apricot" International Film Festival
Ron Holloway, Berlin, 15 July 2006

"When we organized our first festival, we thought it would be hard to start," mused founder-cum-director Harutyun Khachatryan frankly over the launch of the first Golden Apricot film festival back in 2004. "But the second festival was just as hard or perhaps harder. Now when we are holding the third one, it seems that the fourth will be more difficult. I mean it is not the work that is getting harder, but our goals are getting bigger." Harutun Khachatryan – together with his wife, festival art director Susanna Harutyunyan – need not worry. Not enough praise can be showered on the depth and quality of the Third Yerevan "Golden Apricot" International Film Festival (GAIFF) (10-15 July 2006). Although only a five-day event, so much preparation goes into the programming, the roundtables, and the sidebar events that sometimes the head spins. "Golden Apricot 3" offered its public three competitions – feature films, documentaries, and national productions (including the Armenian diaspora) – each headed by prominent international personalities. Armenian-Canadian director Atom Egoyan, serving as a dedicated hands-on festival president, even interrupted rehearsals for an opera production in Toronto to journey to Yerevan and open the festival before a packed house in the spacious Moscow Cinema on Charles Aznavour Square. "This festival is one of the most important events of my cultural formation," he said in his address. "It has become an essential part of my life."

 The next day, an Armenian Orthodox Catholicus was on hand to open the festival by blessing a table that literally overflowed with golden apricots. Armenians, proud of their Apostolic (Orthodox) Church, lay claim to the title "Apostolic" by tracing their belief in Christianity to the Apostles Bartolomew and Thaddeus. Officially a state religion since circa 300 AD, the Armenian Apostolic Church possesses a rich liturgical tradition that’s supplemented by an ancient Christian literary heritage. In the Matenadaran Archives can be found 10,000 Armenian manuscripts, the largest such collection in the world, many dating from the 5th-century, when the Armenian alphabet was invented and the Scriptures translated. A tour of the 3rd-century Ejmiadzin and a visit to the Geghard Monastery are on the list of events for guests and participants. The Armenian Apostolic Church also maintains links to Rome via the Armenian Catholic Church, whose membership in the diaspora dates from as early as the 12th century. 

 GAIFF’s flagship venue, the Moscow Cinema, is conveniently located across Aznavour Square from the splendid Golden Tulip Hotel, where VIP guests are quartered. Within easy walking distance are the Nairi Cinema (local arthouse venue), the Underground Rendez-vous Club (press conferences and nightly talkshows), the House of the Union of Armenian Cinematographers, The House of Journalists, the National Gallery (master classes and exhibition of old posters), the Folk Art Museum (photo exhibition), the Avant-Garde Jazz Club, the Naregatsi Art Institute, and the Armenian Center of Cultural Cooperation (AOKC). Outings to the Sergei Parajanov Museum and the Yerevan Brandy Factory were top priorities on the tour list – indeed, the Parajanov Museum should not be missed under any circumstances. Receptions at a half-dozen embassies were the order of the day.

 Golden Apricot 3 programmed 114 entries from 40 countries in 11 sections: Feature Film Competition, Documentary Competition, Armenian Panorama Competition, Yerevan Premieres, One Day in Europe, Summer Euphoria, Makhmalbaf Family Retrospective, Marco Bellochio Retrospective, Godfrey Reggio Retrospective, Yervant Gaianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi Retrospective, and Directors Across the Border. Lifetime Achievement Awards were given to Artavazd Peleshyan (Armenia), Marco Bellochio (Italy), Antonino Guerra (Italy), Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Iran), Godfrey Reggio (USA). Yours truly, Ron Holloway, was honored with the Sergei Parajanov Museum Medal. And German actress Dorothea Moritz guest-performed a combined Friedrich von Schiller and Heinrich Heine Reading in the AOKC Cultural Center for devotees of German poetry.

 The Golden Apricot for Best Feature Film was awarded to Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Zui hao de shi guang (Three Times) (Taiwan/France). According to a statement by the director, Three Times is a "chant of love" set in three periods of time – A Time for Love in 1966, A Time for Freedom in 1911, and A Time for Youth in 2005. This interwoven trilogy of tragic love stories stars the same actors, Shu Qi and Chang Chen, whose performances contrast with motifs (letters, songs, poems) to expand upon the tragic elements, the lost illusions, the fatal decisions in each story. The 1911 episode, the center-piece of the film, is presented as a would-be silent movie with music and dialogue rendered in inter-titles. Set in a flower-house during the Japanese occupation period, it sketches the longing of a courtesan to form a lasting relationship with a favorite customer. In the 1966 episode a young army recruit on a one-day furlough goes from pool hall to another across the island in search of a girl he’s infatuated with – finally cornering her a few hours before catching the last bus back to camp. In the 2005 episode the real-life story of the frail, lesbian singer Oy Gin is used to explore her lack of commitment in forming a lasting relationship with a suitor. Taken as a while, Three Stories pays homage to the bliss of fleeting love memories and those unforgettable moments now lost forever.

 Awarded a share of the Silver Prize, Robert Guédiguian’s Le voyage en Armenie (Trip to Armenia) (France) is the auteur director’s most personal film and a homage to the memory of his Armenian father (although it should be noted that his mother is German). Born in the Estaque district of Marseilles, a favorite haunt of Cézanne and the Impressionists at the turn of the century, Robert Guédiguian’s self-styled "Estaque tales" are always set in the same proletarian district of Marseilles and with the same love and understanding for the poor. Over the past quarter-century, he has exercised the privilege of making films with the same actors and crew. French actress Ariane Ascaride, in particular, is nearly always paired with Gérard Meylan – indeed, she has played the lead role in a dozen of his independently made feature films. In Trip to Armenia she plays the daughter of a seriously ill parent, who suddenly disappears but leaves clues as to where he can be found. The journey takes the daughter to a remote Armenian village in the Caucasus, where the old man is eventually discovered – seated under an apricot tree in bloom!

 More entries in the strong Feature Film Competition included, among others, Andreas Dresen’s Sommer vorm Balkon (Summer in Berlin) (Germany), Krzysztof Zanussi’s Persona non grata (Poland), Alexei Gherman’s Garpastum (Russia), Rakshan Bani-Etemad’s Gilaneh (Iran), Jasmila Zbanic’s Grbavica (Bosnia), Michael Glawogger’s Slumming (Austria), and Pedro Almodovar’s Volver (Return) (Spain), among others – an impressive festival lineup, to say the least. Andreas Dresen’s Summer in Berlin received the Award of the Armenian Film Critics.

 Michael Glawogger’s Workingman’s Death (Austria/Germany) was awarded the Golden Apricot for Best Documentary. Shot in five corners of the globe and nine years in the making, Workingman’s Death is nothing short of a creative tour-de-force on the plight of the working man in the 21st century. Running at two hours, the documentary opens with a chronicle of survival in the Ukrainian Donbass, where a group of unemployed miners re-light their lamps and go back into an abandoned mine to scratch out coal to heat their homes and keep the stoves burning. In Indonesia Glawogger and his cameraman Wolfgang Thaler accompany workers as they lug baskets of brimstone on bare backs from a fiery sulphur pit up a steep hill to sell on the market along the way they pass gaping tourists whose interest is only an exotic photo to take home. In Nigeria Glawogger and Thaler visit a slaughter-house on an open square splattered with mud-slime and the blood of goats and cattle, the work requires the input of children as well. In Pakistan they film workers dismantling huge rust-covered oil-takers, and in China they get as close to the furnace of a steel-mill as shooting would allow. Workingman’s Death, with its overpowering images, is a blunt outcry against the exploitation of the working’s man on some of the most dangerous wage-earning jobs in the world.

 The Golden Apricot for Best Armenian Film was awarded to Hrant Hakobyan’s The Dwellers of Forgotten Islands, a feature documentary about the poor and forgotten who live on the edge of society without anyone in high circles taking much notice of them. Another Armenian documentary that impressed was Levon Grigoryan’s Memories About "Sayat-Nova" – simply because more rare archival material has been found from Sergei Parajanov’s severely cut and nearly destroyed Sayat-Nova (USSR, 1969) masterpiece. The 26-minute compilation film is one of nearly forty films world-wide that continue to pay respect to Sergei Parajanov (1924-1990), one of the "magical masters" of cinematic art. Lastly, a word of praise should be extended to Harutyun Khachatryan’s own Poeti veradardze (Return of the Poet) presented in the Directors Across Borders (DAB) section. A fiction documentary about the legendary Jivany (1846-1909), an itinerant Armenian poet and philosopher rendered, its life and heritage is viewed through the eyes of a contemporary sculptor and is echoed in the emotional outburst of the populace on a mythical journey from Yerevan to the poet’s birthplace in the village of Javakhk.

 Of immense importance to the future development of GAIFF was a new section of 27 films from 15 countries grouped under Directors Across Borders. In general, the focus is on the efforts of filmmakers to chronicle the progress made in newly independent states emerging from the Soviet era as these countries and republics search for a national cultural language and face the issues posed by globalization and trans-nationalism. In particular, DAB provides a forum for independent filmmakers living in the Caucasus and the immediate region. Its hope is to contribute to a new ""common space" that would respect the differences of those who have lived together for centuries. The cinematic results of this wide-ranging endeavor might be evident next year in the programming at several Central and Eastern European film festivals.

Awards

International Feature Film Competition
Golden Apricot – Best Feature Film
Zui hao de shi guang (Three Times) (Taiwan/France), dir Hou Hsiao-hsien
Silver Prize – ex aequo
La leyenda del tiempo (The Legend of Time) (Spain), dir Isaki Lakuesta
Le voyage en Armenie (Trip to Armenia) (France), dir Robert Guédiguian

International Documentary Competition
Golden Apricot – Best Documentary Film
Working Man’s Death (Austria/Germany), dir Michael Glawogger
Silver Prize
Estamira (Brazil), dir Markos Prado
Special Mention
Ljudmila & Anatolij (Sweden), dir Gunnar Bergdahl

Armenian Panorama Competition
Golden Apricot – Best Film
The Dwellers of Forgotten Islands, dir Hrant Hakobyan
Award for Emerging Filmmaker – ex aequo
The Genocide in Me (Canada), dir Araz Artinyan
My Name Is Happiness (Russia), dir Vardan Hakobyan
The Lighthouse (Russia), dir Maria Sahakyan

Jury Special Mention – Lifetime Achievement Award, Posthumous
Ara Vahuni

“Parajanov’s Thaler” – Lifetime Achievement Award
Artavazd Peleshyan, Armenia
Marco Bellochio, Italy
Antonino Guerra, Italy
Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Iran
Godfrey Reggio, USA

Sergei Parajanov Museum Medal
Ron Holloway, Germany/USA

Awards of Armenian Filmmakers Union and Armenian Association of Film Critics and Cinema Journalists
Sommer vorm Balkon (Summer in Berlin) (Germany), dir Andreas Dresen – Feature Film Competition
Arcana (Chile), Cristobal Vicente – Documentary Competition
Returner (Returning) (France), dir Serge Avedikian – Armenian Panorama
I pugli in tasca (Fist in His Pockets) (Italy), dir Marco Bellochio – Retrospectives