Running projects

FAUCETS, ANIMATION FILM

FAUCETS / ԾՈՐԱԿՆԵՐ is a short film based on a poem by Zahrad, a Western-Armenian poet. Zahrad isn't widely known in Armenia and there is zero chance to find his books in bookstores in Yerevan. The article on Wikipedia is reducing his life and work to 3 paragraphs. I didn't know him as well, and I learned about him from my Lebanese-Armenian friend Serge, who started this beautiful project and involved Shamiram and myself to direct 3 short films based on Zahrad's poems. Each of us had to choose a poem to make it into a film. So Serge directed and animated The Woman Cleaning Lentils (a poem without a single verb) all by himself, Sham and Serge together are making a story of a cat that wanted to be called Velázquez, and I am doing Faucets. I had no second thought while choosing the text. Imagine a bored man selling faucets in a dusty store in Istanbul in 50s or 60s and fantasizing about the buyers and visitors.
(This is a work in progress. See more at my Behance profile)

RED BEADS, GOLDEN EARRINGS

A research-based artistic project exploring the disappearing material culture and fading memory in an Armenian village Heshtia in Georgia. In this project, I am mixing dream-like childhood memories of 25 years ago of an isolated  Armenian community that found a new home in the South of Georgia following the 1928-30 displacements of Armenians from the Armenian regions of Erzrum, Mush, Sasoon (modern-day Turkey) following the Russian-Turkish war. This world has nearly disappeared now, and I was lucky to have witnessed it when it was still brimming with life. Check out my bitter-sweet photo diary   from a trip in August 2023 here.