Diaspora | Atom Egoyan and Armenia

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Diaspora | Atom Egoyan and Armenia
«The Point of View of Exiled Filmmakers
is Romantic by Nature»
Interview with Atom Egoyan by Thierry Jobin
E What films do exiled communities
and their children enjoy
watching in order to reflect on
where they come from? Following
cartoonist Patrick Chappatte
and his Lebanese roots,
the Diaspora section is making
a foray into Armenian territory
accompanied by Canadian filmmaker
Atom Egoyan.
T.J.: Atom Egoyan, knowing your
work, it’s easy to imagine that
your choice of films for the FIFF
was influenced by a well thoughtout
perspective…
A.E.: Yes. I could have obviously
chosen films directed by great
Armenian filmmakers like Hamo
Beknazarian or Henrik Malyan.
Without forgetting someone like
Artavadz Pelechian, of course.
But instead – not to take anything
away from those names
and Oksana Mirzoyan’s short
film 140 Drams (2012) pays homage
to the new generation – I
deliberately chose five featurelength
films made by outsiders
who went there to film. Sergeï
Parajanov, for example, was born
in Kiev and created a large part of
his remarkable work in Ukraine.
He went to Armenia, where his
family comes from, to film Sayat
Nova (1968). And you can feel
it: it’s an uplifting masterpiece
from someone rediscovering
his own culture. I see an obsession
in it and an exile’s point of
view. You have to remember that,
for years, the cultural capital
of Armenia was Tbilisi. In a certain
way, Armenians have always
lived within other empires: the
Ottoman Empire, Russia, etc.
And the Armenian diaspora
existed long before the genocide.
So we can view the notion of
diaspora as having fully participated
in the evolution of Armenian
culture. Which creates, as in
Sayat Nova, a very specific point
of view, romantic by nature, full
of contrast and tension.
T.J.: Contrast and tension that
are also found in your films Calendar
(1993) and Ararat (2002) –
films that you have likewise chosen
for this section. Why did you
choose two of your own films?
A.E.: You said it: because the
first thing I looked for were radical
expressions of this type of
contrast and tension. For Cal-
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endar, which was my return to
my roots but a place I had never
lived, I chose to explore – with
the minimal money I had available
– a road both experimental
and homemade. At that time,
twenty years ago, Armenia was
going through its worst economic
crisis. There was no electricity.
The country was still in
limbo. If we were to go back there
today, the same places would be
full of tourists. Then in Ararat, I
was looking to describe how the
trauma continues to affect people
almost a century after the
genocide. The public was probably
expecting a broad film that
told the story once and for all,
making people admit to what
happened. And I didn’t give them
what they were waiting for…

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Diaspora | Atom Egoyan and Armenia
T.J.: It’s a bit like recognition
of the Armenian genocide was
lacking a film that produced the
kind of effect of Steven Spielberg’s
Schindler’s List (1993),
which revealed the Holocaust to
millions of Americans. And the
reception of Ararat perhaps suffered
because of it.
A.E.: That’s exactly it. Fewer and
fewer people read Primo Levy or
Anne Frank. The vast majority
don’t go looking for images from
the past either. They want what’s
new. Yet that unfortunately
says a lot about the true place
of film and images in our society.
And that’s the big problem
for Armenians: we have neither
documentary images nor words
from the likes of a Primo Levy
to inscribe our story on the consciousness
of the 21 st century.
Armenian filmmakers know this
all too well. If I’ve included two of
my own films and people are surprised
by that, it’s because I also
want to highlight this instability
– that of our memory through
images.
T.J.: Your colleague Robert Guédiguian
must have thought
about these issues. For years, he
pushed off this encounter with
his roots before filming Armenia
(2005).
A.E.: It’s one of the most difficult
challenges for anyone coming
out of the diaspora. In Ararat, you
can say that Charles Aznavour
more or less embodies Henri Verneuil.
Now, remember, Verneuil
waited until he was 70 years old
to finally allude to his Armenian
roots and the genocide. It was
supposed to be the film of his
career. But you can’t say that
Mayrig (1991) is a masterpiece.
It’s hard because a project like
that almost never lives up to the
expectations it provokes. Guédiguian,
in my opinion, was much
more successful, particularly
thanks to a more direct, generous,
accessible narration. Having
just attempted a film in the present,
past and future with Ararat
– a film that takes on too much,
in my opinion – I felt joy watching
Armenia. I had a similar feeling
watching Braden King's Here
(2011), which offers, once again,
a really interesting outside point
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of view. A land-mapping engineer
that explores Armenia to
document what remains: such a
beautiful idea!
T.J.: Looking at your trajectory,
what’s striking is that your passionate
interest today for Armenian
culture came about late in
life.
A.E.: I was born in Egypt and my
entire family immigrated to Canada
when I was two years old…
On my father’s side, my grandfather
and my grand-mother
were genocide survivors while
my mother’s family had been living
in Egypt for a longer time. But
we were never Egyptian citizens.
We were registered, but it wasn’t
really an official document. It
was only in Canada, in Victoria in
British Colombia, that we finally
got real identity papers.
T.J.: And you first and foremost
tried to assimilate to Canadian
culture at all costs.
A.E.: That was my whole life. Until
I turned 18. That’s when I arrived
in Toronto for school. And
when I discovered at that I didn’t

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Diaspora | Atom Egoyan and Armenia
know anything about a whole
part of my history. That literally
overwhelmed me.
T.J.: Until that point there hadn’t
been any expression in your family
about its origins?
A.E.: Of course there had been.
We had books about painting,
in particular. My parents loved
painting and painted in their
free time. So I was very aware of
my family’s cultural side. What I
wasn’t aware of, was the historical
context or the importance of
the church.
T.J.: What clicked for you in Toronto
that you suddenly had this
thirst to know about your Armenian
roots?
A.E.: At university, the Anglican
chaplain, Harold Nahabedian,
was actually a converted Armenian
priest. He allowed me
to learn everything: to read, to
write, to understand the history…
T.J.: Why didn’t your father manage
to fill this role when you were
younger?
A.E.: Because Nahabedian had
stayed passionate about Armenia.
My father had a different experience.
When he was young, he
was lucky enough to study at the
Chicago Art Institute. He found
himself surrounded by abstract
and impressionist thought. And
when he came back, he was
shocked by the feedback from
the Armenian community in Cairo:
why go so far away to learn to
paint like a child?! After which his
relationship with his Armenian
roots became complicated. Extremely
complicated. In the ’70s,
he went to Armenia and in front
of the monument dedicated to
the genocide victims, the Tsitsernaskaberd
in Yerevan, he literally
collapsed. He sometimes talks
about what happened, saying it
was as if the ghosts of the past
overcame him. As if all his years
of denial came back to him with
violence. I remember it so well:
he returned to Canada completely
changed. Now he cries
when he hears, in Ararat, one of
the songs that his mother used
to sing to him.
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