Arts & Culture - Armenian Reporter

The road with no sheep.
Here and now
Braden King’s upcoming
film is an ode to the
wondrous mystique of
Armenia
by Tamar
Kevonian
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. – Award-winning
filmmaker Braden King is preparing to
shoot a feature-length film, titled Here,
in Armenia in the spring of 2009. He is
in Los Angeles for a series of meetings in
connection with the project. He arrives
for the scheduled appointment at a café
located in a bohemian enclave of the city
dressed in a long-sleeve, white buttoneddown
shirt, which clearly marks him
as a non-native of Southern California,
where temperatures in these early-October
days are still hovering near a hundred
degrees.
At 37, King still has his boyish good
looks, accentuated by a mop of hair reminiscent
of a young John Lennon. He
takes a seat and looks around for the
waiter to order an ice tea. It’s a busy
Sunday afternoon and there isn’t a waiter
to be found. Never mind.
Shushi Main Square.
Braden King.
King was introduced to the idea of
filming in Armenia by Garine Torossian,
a close friend and fellow filmmaker.
Prior to that he had no knowledge of
the small country nestled at the base of
Mount Ararat. His friend’s suggestion
planted the seed and over the course of
a year he began to notice bits of information
about it in newspapers and on
television programs. Although he was
familiar with the work of Parajanov and
other Soviet-era Armenian filmmakers,
he knew practically nothing about Armenia,
its people, or its history.
Film is a medium that combines all
the elements of art, music, acting, and
photography, all of which King experimented
with throughout his life, beginning
in high school. He was heavily influenced
by the films of John Hughes
and iconic movies such as Easy Rider, all
of them having complex themes of journeys
and discoveries. His first featurelength
film, Dutch Harbor: Where the
Seat Breaks Its Back, set in Alaska’s Aleutian
Islands, examines the transition of
a small village from a remote outpost to
a very active international commercialfishing
community. “I could have chosen
the easier route, filming another romantic
comedy set in New York City, but do
we really need another one of those” he
says to explain his choices.
Here tells the story of Will Shepard,
an American satellite-mapping engineer
contracted to create a new, more
accurate survey of the country of Armenia.
His work is referred to as “groundtruthing.”
In the course of his travels,
Will meets Gadarine Najarian, in a rural
hotel. Tough and intriguing, she’s an expatriate
Armenian art photographer on
her first trip back to the country she left
years ago, passionately trying to figure
out what kind of relationship – if any
- she still has with her home country. The
two lone travelers instantly and unconsciously
bond and impulsively decide to
continue their travels together. They experience
the trip in their own individual
ways and, ultimately, through each other’s
eyes. Will is continually challenged
with erroneous data as his trip descends
toward failure, while Gadarine encounters
more personal static: nationality,
culture, family, old friends. As she starts
to discover a new relationship with her
homeland, Will begins to question the
solitary life he has chosen. It is a journey
of self-discovery.
A fitting locale
As soon as King arrived in Yerevan, it became
apparent to him that Armenia was
the place to set the story of Here, which
he has co-written with Dani Valent. “I arrived
late at night, checked into the Ani
Hotel, and, after a few hours of sleep, hit
the streets to familiarize myself with the
city,” he recalls. “Around the corner from
the hotel, on Abovyan Street, I ran across
a street vendor selling country and geographical
maps. It was ironic and fitting.”
He was impressed with all that the
country had to offer. “Armenia has layer
after layer of beauty and themes,” he
says. “The country became a third cowriter
of the film.” According to a survey
of European visitors to Armenia at the
end of their trip, they tend to feel that
their journey has been incomplete, that
there wasn’t enough time to discover all
that there was to know about Armenia.
For the purposes of Here, King was
looking for a place that combined the elements
of solitary travel and the search
for identity. “I was trying to find a place
where the national symbol, like Mount
Ararat, is in another country,” he explains.
“The country seemed fictional.”
He needed to pin the themes of the film
to a specific location, and Armenia fit
the bill.
The screenplay began as an exploration
of atmosphere and tone. King recalls:
“I’ve traveled cross-country in the
U.S. alone and I’ve traveled internationally
alone. Dani had similar experiences.
We were searching for a vessel and
structure about the affect of traveling in
that way, the personal journey, and the
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Armenian Reporter Arts & Culture November 1, 2008
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