The organizers of the “Golden Apricot” international movie festival, film-director Harutyun Khachatryan, film-experts Mikhael Staboltsyan and Susanna Harutyunyan wish to implement many other projects besides the festival for developing film-making in Armenia.
By being a member of the European Art Parliament, Susanna Harutyunyan participated in the last workshop of the parliament, which took place in Lisbon. In her opinion, Europe has started to pay a lot of attention to culture because they think that the new ideas and the ideals uniting Europeans may originate in the result of communication of arts and artists. “The art anticipates and reveals. This creates an opportunity for inner-art communication”, reads the declaration of the Parliament. The film doesn’t have nationality, religion or border. As a result of the workshop it was decided to organize a program in Armenia, called “Film-director without borders”. The program has a goal to create a common film environment for all the neighboring states of Southern Caucasus. The creation of national and international art pieces may create a specific dialog, by presenting the lifestyles of neighboring countries, their difficulties, expectations and traditions. For that reason the “Directors without borders” program is planning to organize a forum of independent film-makers and will support to film-making of the region. “The final outcome of this will be joint films”, said S. Harutyunyan. The jointly made films will further be spread all over the world through festivals, discussions, workshops and demonstrations. It is foreseen that the newly made films will be documentaries, since the documentary accurateness is more comprehensive and understandable than the regular actors’ films. Besides, the documentary films will not have the need for complicated translation. Perhaps that’s the reason why the role of the film-director is signified, who is the only author of the documentary film. Many invitations were sent to directors that wanted to become members of the “Film-directors without borders” program. And the organizers of the “Golden Apricot” festival will be ready to introduce the participants and discuss all kinds of recommendations and comments during next year’s festival. The program will also have its fund. The European Art Parliament supports the program, but this support is not financial and since the “Directors without borders” is a new program, the personnel of the “Golden Apricot” found a way for dialog. On January 10, documentary films of Armenian production will be showed in Iran. This event will later be continued in Turkey, Georgia and some other countries of North Caucasus. “There is no trace of cultural policy in Armenia. Film-directors, producers- we are expecting new films from you”, said H. Khachatryan.