Ararat

[Azat]

...

There is also good news for Atom Egoyan, whose new movie, Ararat, is being snapped up even before it is made. The movie, slated to be shot in Armenia next year, has so far been picked up for distribution in France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Ireland, Russia, Singapore and Israel. The movie tells the story of the 1915 Turkish massacre of Armenians, and it stars Charles Aznavour -- the French-Armenian actor and singer -- along with Eric Bogosian, Bruce Greenwood, Elias Koteas, Christopher Plummer, Brent Carver, Marie-Josee Croze and Arsinee Khanijian. In typically layered Egoyan fashion, the story concerns a film director, played by Aznavour, who returns to Armenia to make a film about the genocide.

 

...

http://www.vancouversun.com/newsite/entert...nt/5078134.html

[MosJan]

Thats nice to know !!!

[Pilafhead]

I she really in it??? Wow....

[Azat]

Who is she Mike?

[bellthecat]

His wife. But why the surprise - she is in just about everything he has made; saves money I suppose (or at least keeps it in the family!) because it can't be for her stilted acting ability.


Steve

[Nané]

Thanx for the info Azat

I hope you don't mind the fact that I moved it to this forum. It fits better here I think.

 

(just pretending to be doing some work around here) hehehe

[Azat]

Atom Egoyan's 'Muse' Explores Her Roots

 

Reuters - 5/19/2001

 

PARIS--After 12 years of being married to Canadian independent filmmaker Atom Egoyan and appearing in as many of her husband's films, Arsinee Khanjian would like to be described as something more than Egoyan's "muse."

Born in Beirut and raised in Montreal in an Armenian family that fled massacres in the First World War and Lebanon's civil war, Khanjian is ready for another revival, closer to her roots in the theater, French culture and Armenian history.

In recent years, she has appeared in films by leading French directors such as Olivier Assayas and Catherine Breillat as well as her husband and she starred this month in a play by German author Goethe in Paris and Strasbourg, France.

Other projects ahead will mean that she will fly more often between Toronto's CN tower and Paris' Eiffel tower, and she describes her new recognition in France as a dream become true. "It is like a miracle to me. I am living a child's dream," she told Reuters in an interview at a popular Parisian brasserie.

She was raised with French culture, listening to pop singers on radio waves crossing the Mediterranean from southern France, but she gradually lost this bond when she moved to Toronto after first emigrating to Quebec at age 17.

In 1984, her soft, dark hair and tragic features charmed a young man named Atom Egoyan, who hired her for his first film. After that they never separated.

She personified her husband's many fantasies, going from a pregnant owner of a strip club in "Exotica" to the mother of a young boy killed in a school bus crash in "The Sweet Hereafter," two films that won awards at the Cannes festival.

Even if it implies certain sacrifices for her family life -- she has a young son in Toronto -- Khanjian is determined to explore other perspectives, especially in theater, that will distinguish her voice from her husband's.

"I am beginning to see the word 'career' like a challenge. Am I as essential as Atom is for cinema? I don't know, but I could not live from Atom's success ... because otherwise I wouldn't be happy," she said.

COUPLE HAUNTED BY 'THE GENOCIDE'

This new phase in Khanjian's professional career coincides with a very personal project that she describes as a lifetime challenge and a mission for her and her husband.

In June, she will take part in the shooting of "Ararat," a film the Armenian community has been waiting for a long time. It commemorates what Armenians say was the massacre of up to a million of their people by Turks in the First World War.

"Since Atom started shooting, people were asking him: 'When will you do a film on the genocide?"'

"For years he could not do it, but by sharing our interrogations on identity he developed an emotional, intellectual and political vision on the meaning of history," she said, carefully stressing each word in a husky voice.

To tell the tragic story of his people without turning it into a classic historic epic, Egoyan decided to show it through the lens of a character shooting a film on the killings.

Egoyan's alter ego, acting as the "spokesman" for the Armenian community, had to be French singer Charles Aznavour, Khanjian said. "He represents our pride of being Armenian. No Armenian doesn't know Aznavour."

"Ararat" is also a tribute to Arshile Gorky, an Armenian painter who escaped the killings and sought refuge in the United States in 1920. Khanjian plays a historian who wrote a book on Gorky and who collaborates with Aznavour to incorporate elements of the painter's life in his film.

Khanjian usually collaborates on the preparation of her husband's films, but this time she said Egoyan worked solo because the subject was too sensitive.

"I am so afraid to see that polite lack of interest, that fuzziness in the eyes of the public," she said, referring to the unwillingness of many people to hear about this difficult and controversial subject.

France and a few other countries have officially recognized the incident as a genocide but Turks deny it and the number of those who died is still unknown nearly a century later.

Khanjian's grandparents survived and she inherited a very strong sense of justice from this experience, she said, making "Ararat" a very personal project and part of her quest to commemorate her ancestors' fate.

"I live the genocide as if it were my own memory," she said. "For my mother, my whole life had to be devoted to this event: Seek the necessary justice and protect the memory of those who have disappeared."

http://www.latimes.com/wires/went/20010517...tCB00a3045.html