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[Second Issue of the Day]
#8
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
July 1, 2002
Egoyan film moves Moscow audience
Criticized by Turkey as propaganda, new movie brings Armenians to tears
By MARK MACKINNON
MOSCOW -- Atom Egoyan's new film Ararat, which spawned controversy at Cannes and political furor in advance of its release elsewhere, has provoked an entirely different reaction from a largely Armenian audience at its Moscow premiere: tears.
The film, Mr. Egoyan's dramatization of how the Armenian genocide of 1915 affects the lives of descendants in Canada today, was at the centre of a political maelstrom even before it had its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May. It has been criticized as propaganda by the Turkish government, which denies that soldiers of the old Ottoman Empire systematically killed about 1.5 million Armenian citizens during the First World War.
But Saturday night, the politics were secondary.
Chosen to close the Moscow Film Festival, Ararat was screened at a theatre owned by an Armenian, and the house was packed with hundreds of Armenians anxious to see one of the first major cinematic attempts to tell a story most of them have been carrying around in their hearts.
Applause was light and polite as the film ended, but rose as the Armenian-Canadian Mr. Egoyan walked to the front of the theatre. Afterward, many in the audience were clearly emotional. Several said they were proud of Mr. Egoyan.
"I cried and cried through the whole film," Maria Ter-Markarian, a fashion designer of Armenian descent, said after the premiere. "I think this film will be a huge success in Armenia, because it's our story."
The film dances between 1915 Turkey and present-day Canada, as a family of Armenian-Canadians tries to come to grips with its people's history as well as the Turkish government's position. Ankara says that while as many as half a million Armenians may have died in the 1915-23 period, it was as a result of civil unrest rather than any systematic campaign.
After coming under attack in the international press for his one-sided tale -- the film gives no quarter to the Turkish version of events, and Turkish soldiers are shown brutally raping women and killing children -- Mr. Egoyan said he was thrilled to be finally showing the film to an Armenian audience.
He said showing the film in Moscow completed a journey begun 11 years before, when he travelled to Armenia to make a film with prize money he had won at the Moscow Film Festival that year.
"I remember so clearly then wanting to tell this story. It has been an honour to have the freedom to tell it the way I have."
Politics was never far away, however, even at the Moscow premiere. A Turkish diplomat, invited to the opening by the Canadian embassy, was a conspicuous no-show.
The movie is slated to go into wider release this fall after the Toronto Film Festival, but some Turkish groups have called for a boycott of Miramax, which is releasing the film in North America, and its parent company, Walt Disney Co. Web sites have been set up to encourage people to send protest letters to the film companies.
George Nersissian, president of Paradise/MGN, the company that screened Ararat on Saturday night, said he now plans to show the movie in Armenia.
However, some who watched the movie worried that its complex narrative -- the story hops back and forth in time, and among several seemingly disparate plot lines -- will mean that the mainstream audience likely will never see it.
"This is a film for Armenians, and maybe for specific cinema fans," said Alexander Akopov, a Moscow journalist.
"I hope it will inspire a really big movie so that a much bigger audience will understand what happened."
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