Film directors Paolo and Victorio Taviani film all of their movies together, creating complicated, allegoric legends about the social/political ambiance and people ready for protest and struggle. The social rebellion and search for justice are very beautiful emotional states, and the Taviani brothers continue to underline that. Their films are not manifesto; rather they are meaningful and, as a rule, are based on plots with various ramifications.
In their last film, “Ranch of the Larks”, which was created based on the novel written by Italian- Armenian writer Antonia Arslan, the Taviani brothers touched upon the reality of the Armenian Genocide. The focus of the film is on human destinies which reveal the tragedy of the entire nation.
“We always try to make reality serve as the basis and go from reality to imagination. The characters are most important, and it is necessary to move from the personal to the general,” Paolo Taviani said during a press conference.
The film directors visited Yerevan to receive a presidential award for their great contribution to Genocide recognition and to receive the special prize of the Sergey Parajanov category during the “Golden Apricot” international film festival. They will not be able to be present during their film premiere, which will take place on July 9, and will herald the start of the “Golden Apricot” film festival.
The “Ranch of the Larks” tells about an Armenian family whose members are separated from each other due to the Genocide and the war, and dream of being united on their native land and ranch.
“We like to tell stories and know that we need very strong dramaturgical material. We found that material in the novel by Antonia Arslan, and decided that our film had to be contemporary and not historical…a film of today,” says Taviani who places more emphasis on the humanistic side in all of his films. In the bad turn of events of the story, brothers may turn into enemies, while total strangers may become brothers. People behave differently in extremely tense moments, but they always strive towards the peaceful and harmonious life with their protest and struggle.
“We didn’t present the Turks as wild beasts on purpose, because we didn’t want to create schematic characters. The Turkish characters are very contradictory in the film, because the people searching for the truth are always contradictory. The truth is going to come out victorious sooner or later. Germany managed to accept its responsibility for the killings during the years of fascism. I hope that one day Turkey will find the strength to accept the fact that there was an Armenian Genocide and that this film will be shown in Turkish schools in the future,” says P. Taviani.
The world premiere of the “Ranch of the Larks” took place during this year’s Berlin film festival and, as those present at the festival said, there was dead silence in the auditorium a long while after the film. For the Taviani brothers, the most important thing was to reveal the truth about the Armenian Genocide to the Europeans. According to the brothers, people were approaching and congratulating them after the showing of the film.
“They were telling us that they got acquainted with a tragedy that they had known almost nothing about.”
He went on to say how his family had heard about the Armenian Genocide for the first time. There was an old and silent Armenian servant by the name of Melania working in the home of the young film directors.
“She was one of the survivors of the Genocide and didn’t like to talk about her life. But when we were able to convince her to break the silence, she started to tell us horrifying things. At first it seemed to us as though she was exaggerating and that reality was turning into a myth. It was only years later when we started to gather materials on the Armenian Genocide when we realized that it was reality. Now I would really like to hug Melania and show her the film first and then apologize to her. We felt her invisible presence during the entire production of the film. We felt very happy when we received a letter from Melania’s daughter telling us that she had seen the film and was grateful to us.”
Paolo Taviani grew up in the fascist regime and witnessed the Nazi persecutions, and places high emphasis on what it means to remember.
“We had our truth and now we faced another truth and want to share it with everyone.”
Producer of the film “Ranch of the Larks”, Gracia Volpi, said that it was hard to find funding for the film production because it is generally difficult to find a spot in the film market for non- commercial films.
“You need a lot of courage to produce a non-commercial film. Money is usually given for easy-to-produce films and that leads to a crisis of ideologies. Nowadays, films that raise serious issues and give the audience the chance to think don’t sell very many tickets and are not able to compete with the entertaining, so-called, leisure films. We call such films “popcorn films”.”
According to Gracia Volpi, they needed the “stubbornness of the tiger” to secure funding for the film. The commission of the Council of Europe granted 600,000 Euros to the Taviani brothers and only the Turkish representative was against the film, but the vote of that country had no effect on the decision. It turned out that Turkey also made a contribution to the production of the film on the Armenian Genocide because the elaborated system of the Council of Europe worked smoothly. If you accept the European system, then it quite often makes decisions for you, even if those decisions do not fit in with your country’s policy.
“The Turkish ambassador to Italy tried to protest the film’s production. He said ‘we love the Italians, what have we done to the Italians for them to show this film?’ Our Minister of Culture said that there is nothing wrong; it’s just that art has free expression in Italy,” says P. Taviani.
He noted that the borders separating countries and nations are not that large in reality.
“We are all residents of an entire territory. Being Italian, I told your story and did not misinterpret the reality; I did not betray anyone. I used art to tell the truth.”
As a personal wish and a short address to the world, he said:
“We are all waiting for new heroes to come and for those heroes to fight for the truth. There are times when it is very difficult to be occupied with art and there are times when art is easily created. Time was playing strange jokes on us. Now come the hard times for art; now the meanness of politics and ideology is ruling. Art is created more easily in times of war. Director Robert Rossellini has said: “I have not seen anything serious before the war, but by going through war, I received strength and talent. Nowadays, serious authors develop with difficulty.”