Film always needs the media. Both the audience and the professional directors are always waiting for reactions, since the media is not only a means of spreading news, but also an opportunity to check yourself.<\/p>\n
If we talk about the Armenian media\u2019s attitude toward film, I can say that in Armenia the situation is very taciturn, especially if I compare it with Iran, where I was born, study, work, and live. My friends say don\u2019t compare Armenia with 80-million-strong Iran. But I think it makes no difference whether the population is 80 or 3 million. What\u2019s important is having an opinion and position on what you\u2019ve seen.<\/p>\n
In Iran, of course, there\u2019s the misunderstanding known as censorship, which applies to everything. But all the same, there are huge numbers of websites where film critics and correspondents actively work.<\/p>\n
For instance, the news that my film Yeva<\/em> is to be sent from Armenia to the Oscars was reported in Iranian media more than in Armenian media. All the Iranian newspapers wrote about this \u2014 from the extreme right-wing to the extreme left-wing. Also those media outlets for whom it would be absolutely all the same if all the films in the world exploded and disappeared overnight.<\/p>\n You understand, anyone, particularly a creative professional, feels the need for criticism. After my film made it to the big screen, I was impatiently waiting for reactions (if I\u2019m not mistaken, there have been two analyses, no more). Only from the film\u2019s reactions can you understand where you went right and where you went wrong. I go to the movie theaters and, disguised, sit in a corner to see the audience\u2019s reaction.<\/p>\n Of course I find my answers, but I would want there to be many analyses, since in some sense they put the film in its place.<\/p>\n But in Armenia, the field of criticism is so disconnected that I struggle to understand the attitude. In Iran, they take media criticism more seriously. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s understandable that Yeva<\/em> is the first Armenian-Iranian co-production (by the way, the Iranian participation is 70%), but it\u2019s about Armenia, it was filmed in Armenia, and it presents Armenia.<\/p>\n Even if Yeva<\/em> is a bad film, there\u2019s the simple truth that it\u2019s the first film that is actually getting international distribution. And it\u2019s very important that it was included in the selection<\/a> of the Mill Valley Film Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n Iran, which has a powerful film production and developed network of movie theatres, wants to develop joint film production, and Iran\u2019s film leadership is ready to sign a cooperation agreement with Armenia. This is great news.<\/p>\n And if even this news or the news of participating in the Oscars doesn\u2019t find a place in the media, then there\u2019s passivity. <\/p>\n Perhaps the reason is my being a diaspora Armenian. I\u2019m not integrated into Armenia\u2019s cultural fabric, and there are reservations toward me. Or that passivity is generally toward the entire cultural arena.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not talking about the value and quality of my film, but presenting it to the Oscars is one of the film industry\u2019s most important news of at least this month, about which almost nothing is reported.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Instead, I see disseminated the most and through all the news networks is, for example, some minister\u2019s or regional governor\u2019s careless, meaningless, and simply stupid remarks. I would call that a conversation of women sitting around a cup of coffee. And that conversation becomes the entire country\u2019s news network\u2019s sensational topic. <\/p>\n All people and media outlets express themselves about these petty incidents, have a point of view and a position.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t want to grumble, since I love Armenia, but we lack the ability to look at the world from a wide angle. In any case, I\u2019ve constructed my film on the view that there\u2019s a place on this planet that\u2019s called the Eurasia continent, where there\u2019s a South Caucasus, where Armenia is found; next to it is Artsakh, and in Artsakh there\u2019s a village where my protagonists live\u2026<\/p>\n That is, I\u2019m trying to look from a small window to the big world. But I feel that Armenia\u2019s media industry does the opposite: instead of widening the window, it narrows and shrinks it. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n That is, the world enters Armenia through a very small and narrow window.<\/p>\n Anahid Abad Film always needs the media. Both the audience and the professional directors are always waiting for reactions, since the media is not only a means of spreading news, but also an opportunity to check yourself. If we talk about the Armenian media\u2019s attitude toward film, I can say that in Armenia the situation is very Read the full article…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8759,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vox-populi-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/media.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nFilmmaker, Iran<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"