Mount Ararat is sacred to the Armenians. According to biblical tradition, this is where Noah’s ark landed following the Great Flood. Therefore, it remains a painful fact for the Christian Armenians that the mountain is located on Turkish territory, where it can only be seen from the distance. “Ararat-14 tesaran” does not address the question of borders, but deals with a gang of trigger-happy thieves involved in smuggling rare coins in the shadow of the great mountain. With unflinching passion, director Don Askarian has worked for five years on a film that is neither a tragedy, nor a documentary, nor an experimental film. The images shift from color to black and white, while animals – fish, snakes, birds, cats, dogs – infiltrate the screen to interact with the protagonists. The filmmaker studies Mount Ararat from fourteen different standpoints, thus creating a new reality. Flirting with magic, he escapes time and space, transposing a plot that turns into a wild odyssey or an escape. By and by, Don Askarian’s gaze becomes a vision, that of a powerful Armenian filmmaker, both hypnotic and amazingly rich.
Don Askarian was born in Armenia in 1949. He studied art history in Moscow and worked as an assistant-director and film critic before being arrested in 1975. He immigrated to Berlin in 1975, where he has lived and worked ever since. All of his films are anchored in the Armenian culture, and have been presented at many international festivals.
„Magischer Realismus“ – Filme von Don Askarian
ARARAT - 14 VIEWS by Don Askarian
Order DVD via donfilm@yahoo.com
www.don-askarian.am
Int.Film Fest.Rotterdam named him: "King of Cinema"
Don Askarian
Don Askarian was born in Stepanakert, Nagorno Karabakh. In 1967 he went to Moscow and studied history and art. He worked as an assistant-director and film critic for a year after his study.
In 1975-1977 Don Askarian was imprisoned. In 1978 he emigrated from USSR to West Berlin.
For the last 25 years he has lived and worked in Germany, The Netherlands and in Armenia, where he founded his own film companies.
He is a prize-winner at several international film festivals. In 1996 Don Askarian published his book "The Dangerous Light". Every year the interest to his really very unique films grow up. More and more film festivals come to honor Don Askarian with retrospectives. Serious TV-stations like ARD, WDR, ZDF, Channel 4, Arte, but also Belgian, Greek, Swiss, Slovakian, Armenian etc. TV Channels are constant co-producers and buyers of all his films. The films of Don Askarian were sold and broadcasted world wide about 80 times. Don Askarian, honored with a Harvard Film Archive retrospective, is considered the greatest Armenian filmmaker (but he is Russian-German- Dutch too). In 2004 he received Golden Camera Award for Life Achievement at Int. ART Film Festival, Slovakia. It turns out to be clearer what Hans-Werner Dannowski, the president of Interfilm, meant in 1992: "Time will pass until we recognize that Don Askarian is one of the most important filmmakers of our times. His movies will take up the time they need. Finally the films will have their success not with lies and assimilations but with truth." The retrospectives and special screenings around the world, on TV and important film festivals reflect it, mirror the growing interest in Don Askarian's films followed by a broad fascination by the audience.
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