On July 15 Canadian Armenian Atom Egoyan, the president of the Golden Apricot film festival, had a meeting with students in the national gallery.
This person has his solid place in the world “cult” film production, and his meeting with students in Armenia looked more like a lecture. By the way, he did not get any professional education and he was born in a family of artists and liked to film from his childhood.
During the days of the Golden Apricot one can see Egoyan in the streets of Yerevan with a camera in his hands. During the meeting the film producer opened his secret. Two years ago he filmed some scenes in Yerevan with the same camera, and the presentation if his film “The illuminator” took place in the gallery. In fact it was a twenty-minute original movie (Ashot Adamyan was the lead actor) showing that how people can stray from the “truth” and certain rules to move forward in their life. “All of us have to compromise in this life,” says Egoyan. The film is not finished yet and Egoyan will take some more scenes on his camera during the festival and will develop this topic. “If I take 20 minutes every year, I will have a full-length comedy when I become 60,” said Egoyan jokingly. By the way, this will be his first comedy movie. He is financing this movie from his own pocket.
When you listen to Atom Egoyan you understand that the “cult” film producers are compromising in their career too. The example is his recent movie “Kloya” which is shown everywhere in the world. This is fully sponsored by the French Studio Canal and the budget is 15 million dollar. Famous stars are playing in this movie and initially it had business purposes, thus the producers made a lot of things as they liked to be. Even the last part of it is not in the way Egoyan wanted it to be.
He gave advices to Armenian amateurs to film all what they see. “If you go way from the streets of the center of Yerevan for a while, you can see a lot. Unfortunately I don’t have much time to feel those topics but you have that opportunity,” says Egoyan.