ARMENIAN CHURCH OF ST.PETER CELEBRATES ARMENIAN HOLDS FESTIVAL OF
TRADITION AND CULTURE
YEREVAN, AUGUST 16. ARMINFO. It was a festival of tradition and
culture in Watervliet (state New-York) Sunday. St. Peter’s Armenian
Church held its annual Armenian Festival. The church has been a staple
of the community for more than 100 years and enjoys sharing their
food, music and heritage with the Capital Region. Bob Meeson, Parish
Council Chairman, said, “We all come together to enjoy Armenian food,
dance and music, and for a good cause — it helps us keep our church
growing and alive.” A Penny Social Auction was also held to raise
funds. Local merchants and members of the parish donated items that
were auctioned off to those in attendance. The proceeds are going
toward building a new addition to the church

NET PROFIT OF ARMENIA’s BANKING SYSTEM TO TOTAL 9.4BLN AMD BY 2005
YEREVAN, AUGUST 16. ARMINFO. The net profit of Armenia’s banking
system is expected to make up 9.4bln. AMD by 2005, and 11.1bln. AMD by
2007. Bankers forecast that almost all profit expected by 2005 will be
directed to increasing the capital. Only three banks intend to pay
dividends totaling 290.3mln. AMD before July 1, 2005.From that time,
three other banks are to perform this operation, and their dividends
are to amount to 2.4bln. AMD.
If the forecast profit and carrying amounts are ensured by 2005, the
ROA of Armenia’s banking system will make up 2.8% and the ROE 24.2%.
According to bankers, changes in the income-expense structure of the
country’s banking system will be caused by further reduction of
interest rates, increase in the share of assets, improvement of the
credit portfolio and introduction of modern technologies as a result
of a necessity for new banking services.
According to bankers, in the incomes structure, interest incomes will
increase from 26.4bln. AMD to 33.7bln. AMD and noninterest incomes
from 13.8bln. AMD to 17.2bln. AMD January 1, 2005 to January 1,
2007. In the expenses structure, interest expenses are expected to
increase from 8.9bln. AMD to 10.8bln. AMD and noninterest expenses
from 18.1bln. AMD to 22.3bln. AMD. As a result, incomes are expected
to total 51.4bln. AMD and expenses 40bln. AMD by 2005, and
64.3bln. AMD and 49.2bln. AMD respectively by 2007. As a result, the
balance profit is expected to increase from 11.4bln. AMD to
15.1bln. AMD.
According to the RA Central Bank, the net profit of Armenia’s banking
system totaled 4.3bln. AMD in the first half of 2004. By June 1, 2004,
the total capital had been 55.7bln. AMD, assets 310.9bln. AMD. In the
first half of 2004, total incomes were 25.6bln. AMD, and total
expenses 20.2bln. AMD. As a result, balance profit totaled
5.3bln. AMD.

DWELLERS OF MINAZ APPEAL TO COURT AGAINST BP COMPANY
AKHALKALAKI, August 16 (Noyan Tapan). Dwellers of the village of Minaz
(Minadze) of the Akhaltskha region appealed to the court against the
British Petrolium (BP) company in connection with the construction of
the Baku-Tbilisi-Jeihan oil pipeline, which is carried out by this
company. According to the “A-Info” Agency, the reason for the
complaint of the dwellers of Minaz is that their houses greatly
suffered from shocks taking place as a result of the traffic of heavy
machinery used for the construction of the oil pipeline: some houses
are already considered as accident-prone and are under threat of
destruction.
Dwellers of the village demanded that BP should compensate for the
damage, the latter refused to compensate. According to the BP company,
corresponding testing was carried out in the village for checking the
level of shocks taking place as a result of the traffic of their
transport means, and the level of chocks was determined. The company
is sure that the traffic can’t influence the constructions of the
village. BP representatives think that the trumbledown state of the
houses of Minaz is connected with the landslides of the local land.

CASES OF ILLEGAL BUILDING BECOME MORE FREQUENT IN YEREVAN
YEREVAN, August 16 (Noyan Tapan). Unauthorized building and illegal
seizure of land is still widely spread in Yerevan and Yerevan Mayor’s
Office is anxious about this fenomenon. Grigor Melkumian, the Chief
Adviser of Yerevan Mayor, said this at the August 16 press
conference. Meanwhile it was mentioned that the struggle against
unauthorized building has become rather active compared with the
previous years. According to him, 1,974 signals about urban
construction and land use spheres were received at Yerevan Mayor’s
office in January-July of 2004 (in the first half-year of 2003 their
number made 919).
On the basis of them 867 facts were grounded as illegal building and
land seizure (compared with 72 cases of the previous year) and 325
buildings were destroyed and dismantled (compared with 32 buildings
destroyed and dismantled last year). 107 cases of administrative
violations were discussed in the committee in the above-mentioned
period. According to G.Melkumuian, lately unauthorized buildings have
been discovered in Acharian 17 and Artsakh 59b addresses and in the
territory adjoining Shirak street. And unauthorized attics built by
residents were discovered on the roof of the building situated in
Abovian 23.
The Chief Adviser of Yerevan Mayor mentioned that the illegal
buildings and constructions that correspond to the norms of urban
construction are found as a state property by the court and are ruled
by the Mayor’s Office. According to G.Melkumian, such structures may
be put on direct sale or auction after getting a state
registration. Meanwhile, it’s possible that these structures may be
obtained by their former owners.
The Adviser of Yerevan Mayor didn’t exclude that some responsible
officials who are aware of illegal construction may not inform or give
a signal about this in time. 2 employees of Yerevan Mayor’s Office
were dismissed and 3 called to disciplinary account for this very
reason.
G.Melkumian also informed that 17 additional posts were allocated for
the Urban Construction and Land Control Department of Mayor’s
Office. Competitions for occupying them will be held in the middle of
September. A new division of modern technologies and information will
be opened in the department.
From: Baghdasarian

ORGANIZATION CARRYING OUT CONSTRUCTION IN REFUGEES’ DISTRICT IN GYUMRI
FINED
YEREVAN, August 16 (Noyan Tapan). Though the capital construction that
is carried out with the funds of 2004 state budget is implemented due
to the schedule, there are some problems.
According to the Press Service of RA Ministry of Urban Construction,
in connection with this on August 16, Aram Haroutiunian, RA Minister
of Urban Construction, held a consultation with heads of regional
subdivisions of the State Inspection of Urban Construction attached to
Ministry and gave them concrete instructions. In particular, the
organization carrying out construction for refugees in Gyumri was
fined because of some shortcomings.
The construction is carried out with the assistance of the Norwegian
Council of Refugees. Additional time was given to the organization for
elimination of the shortcomings. A.Haroutiunian instructed the heads
of the regional subdivisions of the Inspection to carry out constant
control for each entity that is built and repaired and periodically to
represent information about them.

The Moscow Times
Wednesday, August 18, 2004. Page 4.
VDNKh Fountain Is Losing Its Luster
By Yana Valueva
Special to The Moscow Times
Vladimir Filonov / MT
The first signs of major decay in the 400-square-meter fountain appeared
when water leaks reached over 150 cubic meters a day.
Urgent repairs are needed to prevent the Fountain of People’s Friendship —
the giant, golden Soviet-era attraction at the center of the All-Russia
Exhibition Center, or VVTs — from crumbling to pieces, VVTs’s technical
director said.
The steel and iron-reinforced concrete fountain, which turned 50 on Aug. 1,
now appears eaten away with rust.
Alexander Yegorov, VVTs’s technical director, said a complete overhaul at an
estimated cost of 450 million rubles ($15 million) is urgently needed.
The first signs of major decay in the 400-square-meter fountain appeared
four years ago, when water leaks reached over 150 cubic meters per day,
Yegorov said.
The fountain’s eight pumps, which were designed to project 1,000 liters of
water per second from 800 jets to heights of 22 meters, do not work
properly, and some of the giant gold-plated sculptures depicting women
holding sheaves of wheat are starting to tilt, he said.
Yegorov said city authorities last allotted money for repairs — 1 million
rubles — in 2000. Apart from this modest help, VVTs, which is 70 percent
owned by the federal government and 30 percent by the city government, has
financed all repairs and annual renovations from its own funds.
VVTs, a sprawling shopping and entertainment center with numerous pavilions
and attractions scattered around its grounds, is better known to most Moscow
residents by its former name, VDNKh, or the Exhibition of the People’s
Economic Achievements. VDNKh was a popular destination in Soviet times, with
dozens of stalls displaying ornate shrines to Soviet industry as well as
many luxury goods only available to the bureaucratic elite.
Alexei Zhirov, a spokesman for VVTs, said the Fountain of People’s
Friendship has been on the list of federally protected monuments since 1992.
But despite its protected status, repeated appeals to the Culture Ministry
for cash to carry out restoration work have been unsuccessful.
Leonarda Orembo, deputy head of City Hall’s department for preserving
architectural monuments, said she is fully aware that the fountain needs an
overhaul.
“It’s an ownership problem,” Orembo said. “The city is ready to allocate
money for the repairs, but it needs guarantees.”
The fountain, which has at its center an enormous wheat sheaf in a red
granite bowl, is surrounded by sculptured figures of young women in the
national costumes of the 16 former republics of the Soviet Union, including
Finnish Karelia.
Vladimir Filonov / MT
Sculptures are made of bronze and overlaid with gold.
The sculptures are made of bronze overlaid with thin gold plating, and the
central sheaf is made of gold-plated copper.
About 10 million people visit at the fountain and the VVTs’s other
attractions every year, Yegorov said.
Several smaller fountains in front of VVTs’s pavilions, however, have been
switched off for years.
Hopes for restoration of the fountains could receive a boost from Moscow’s
bid to host the World Expo in 2015. Mayor Yury Luzhkov has set up a special
commission to examine restorations and new construction at VVTs as part of
the city’s bid.
Plans for VVTs include a new 40,000-square-meter pavilion and the
restoration of pavilions of the former Soviet republics located around the
Fountain of People’s Friendship. Pavilions for Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia
and Ukraine have already been restored and reopened.
But whether the Fountain of People’s Friendship will be restored as part of
the World Expo bid is unclear.

Calcutta Telegraph, India
Aug 17 2004
INDIA IN 1865
– The first impact of globalization on India

Writing on the Wall Ashok V. Desai
George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode, Printers to the Queen’s Most
Excellent Majesty, printed in 1867 a Statistical Abstract Relating to
British India, from 1840 to 1865 (as far as the Particulars can be
stated,) Compiled from Official Records and Papers Presented to
Parliament, and presented it to both houses of Parliament on the
Command of her Majesty. According to it, the population of India was
196 million – just about a seventh of what it is in the same area,
including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burmah, which became an Indian
province in 1852. Bombay then had 816,000 people, Madras 427,000, and
Calcutta 378,000. Of Calcuttans, 11224 were Europeans – 6820 men,
2545 women and 1859 children. Most of the men must therefore have
been unattached and childless. No wonder there were 11636
Indo-Europeans – 4082 men, 4218 women, and 2736 children. They were a
largely Calcutta phenomenon; Bombay had only 1891 Indo-Europeans as
against 8415 Europeans. The Madras census did not bother to count
them separately; they were probably too few. Calcutta also had 763
Armenians, 681 Jews, 409 Chinese, 53 Africans, 30 Greeks, and 1441
Asiatics, whatever that may mean.
The Government of India received £45.7 million in revenue in 1865
(the financial year then ended on 30 April), and spent £46.5mn –
£39mn in India, the rest in Britain. That is as many crore rupees; to
get the rupee equivalent, just multiply the figures by ten, for its
value was fixed at 2 shillings for decades. The revenue went up from
£20.1mn in 1840 to £47.6mn in 1865; the star performer was Bombay
presidency, whose revenue went up from £2.4mn to £9.6mn. It was
booming thanks to opium exports. The deficit shot up to an average of
£12mn in the three years following the mutiny because of additional
military expenditure; but taxes were raised, expenditure strictly
controlled, and the deficit was brought down to less than £1mn by
1864. The debt went up to £107.5mn in 1861, but prudent fiscal
management brought it down to £98.5mn in 1865 – £72.4mn raised in
India, and £26.1mn in England. On it, £4.6mn was paid in interest –
6.25 per cent on the average.
Opium brought in £7.3 million in revenue – only second to the £20
million from land revenue. It was a great arrangement – the Chinese
ruined their health, and Indians got rich; the government took a part
of their riches. Salt tax brought in an astonishing £5.5 million – no
wonder Gandhiji picked it for picketing 66 years later. Various
excises – sayer, abkarree etc – brought in £2.6 million, and customs
£2.3 million. Stamp duties were important then, bringing in £2
million. Unaccountably, tax on tobacco was abolished in 1854.
The year 1865 saw 26,823 ships entering British Indian ports; 26070
cleared out of it. Why their numbers differ, I do not know;
presumably 753 vessels slipped out while the harbour master was
sleeping – or were built in the ports. They weighed 4 million tons –
that is, 150 tons on the average. The 20577 Indian vessels weighed
771000 tons – an average of 37 tons; 6246 foreign vessels weighed 3.1
million tons – 500 tons on the average. An average British ship
weighed 940 tons, a Chinese one 620 tons, a Siamese one 62 tons, and
a Ceylonese one, 113 tons. Obviously, size mattered in longer
voyages, especially around the Cape of Good Hope. (In 2003/04, 13
major Indian ports handled 85 million tons.)
Over the 25 years to 1865, the number of foreign vessels entering
went up from 1390 to 6246; their tonnage increased from 460,000 to
3.1mn tons. The number of native vessels went down from 24497 to
20577; their tonnage increased from 591000 tons to 771000. Clearly,
the share of native vessels came down. An anticolonial would
immediately think that the British displaced natives in competition,
fair or foul. Not really; long-distance, inter-ocean trade increased
more than local trade, and the British had a bigger presence in the
latter. Bombay specialized in short-distance trade across the Arabian
Sea; the average vessel entering its port weighed 23 tons in 1840 and
81 tons in 1865. Its trade increased 2.3 times. Calcutta specialized
in long-distance trade; the average vessel entering its port weighed
340 tons in 1840 and 540 tons in 1865. Its trade multiplied 4.5
times.
Calcutta trade was then overwhelmingly international and
western-oriented. The only Asian vessels entering Calcutta in 1865
were 12 Arabian vessels weighing 6884 tons; native vessels accounted
for another 17000 of the total 1.092mn tons. The rest were from white
countries. The British dominated with 1584 of the 1796 foreign
vessels; there were 137 French vessels, 40 American and 22 from the
rest of Europe. Native ships accounted for 26 per cent of the traffic
in Madras and 38 per cent in Bombay. Clearly, native shipping
survived better on the south and the west coast.
India had a massive trade surplus in the entire quarter century from
1840 to 1865; its exports came to £69mn and imports to £50mn in 1865.
Even this is misleading; for of the imports, £22mn was bullion; only
£28mn was goods. The share of bullion climbed from 18 per cent in
1840 to 44 per cent in 1865.
The major suppliers of imports into India in 1840 were Britain (60
per cent), China (15 per cent), the Middle East and the Straits (7
per cent each). By 1865 the market shares of all had fallen –
Britain’s to 46 per cent, China’s to 8 per cent, the Middle East’s
and Straits’ to 3-4 per cent. India had acquired new trading partners
– Australia (7 per cent), France (6 per cent), and Alexandria and the
Suez (13 per cent). Remember, this was before the commissioning of
the Suez Canal in 1869; even before it, trade to Europe had begun to
pass through Egypt.
Exports nearly quintupled from £14mn in 1840 to £69mn in 1865. In
1840, Calcutta dominated with exports of £8mn; by 1865, Bombay was
exporting £41mn out of the £69mn. The reason lay in the direction of
trade. In 1840, 52 per cent of exports went to Britain, 15 per cent
to China, 12 per cent to the Straits, 5 per cent to the Middle East,
and 3 per cent each to Ceylon and Mauritius. In 1865, Britain’s share
was 67 per cent.
China held its share thanks to booming opium which, however, went
from Bombay; Straits’ share fell to 3 per cent, Middle East’s to 3
per cent and Mauritius’ to 1 per cent. India was becoming a raw
material supplier to industrializing Great Britain, and Britain’s
demand turned India’s exports away from the traditional markets
closer to it.
Thus we see in the mid-19th century the first impact of globalization
on India. Shipping technology changed; ships became larger and
travelled further (steamers were just coming into use in 1865). With
it, direction of trade changed; from trade within the Indian Ocean
region, India began to trade more with Britain and China.
Industrializing Britain and opium-eating China created new markets;
as they expanded, India developed a massive export surplus. It did
not know what to do with all that money, so it stashed away gold and
silver. Was that deindustrialization? There may have been; but there
was export-led growth too. For some of India’s people, this must have
been a golden era.

American Daily, OH
Aug 16 2004
The Next Films For Mel Gibson
By Bruce Walker (03/05/2004)
‘The Passion of Christ’ is well on its way to becoming the greatest
film in history, and this victory is despite all the agitprop of the
Left. Mel Gibson, like Rush Limbaugh and like President Bush, is
carrying a battle flag for all conservatives and other normal people.
Now – finally! – that Silent Majority seems to have grasped the
importance of those point men.
The defeat of the Left began when the various barbarian hordes who
constitute Leftism discovered that all their threats, all their
mocking, all their venom, and all their enticements could not sway
Rush Limbaugh or separate him from his tens of millions of listeners.
Although others will doubtless move into foxholes he has held, his
steely determination not to yield was critical.
The full weight of Leftism against President Bush will lead either to
the destruction of a great president or to the complete
demoralization of these hungry, rapacious barbarians. If the Left
cannot defeat President Bush in 2004, then it will never be able to
win an American presidential election.
Now, in the very heart of Leftism, Hollywood, Mel Gibson is proving
that he is stronger and braver than they are. Perhaps `Braveheart,’
which described a Scotsman who stood against all odds for his right
and the right of others to live free was the turning point. Although
a critically acclaimed film, the message was subtly anti-Leftist.
Certainly `The Patriot’ also had the same theme. These two films,
however, could also be explained away as defiance against colonial
oppressors, one of the mythical monsters of Leftism fantasy. The next
film, however, left less ambiguity.
Signs is profoundly religious and profoundly terrifying. It is also
profoundly Christian. Viewers and critics may have missed the symbols
– water, small communities in the Middle East, denial and then
acceptance – but astute Christians should not doubt that this was a
film very much in the tradition of `Out of the Silent Planet.’
What films should Mel Gibson make next? Here are some suggestions.
The only advice I would deign to offer beyond these suggestions is
this: Be bold! Be bold! Be bold! The staid, dull, dreary plots and
dialogue of Leftist culture is both craven and empty. Gibson can do
much more than that with films like these:
‘Venona and Hollywood.’ America now knows what Ronald Reagan knew
when he was in Hollywood. Communist infiltration was very real and
very dangerous. Mel Gibson should make a film – erring on the side of
caution in his conclusions – which historically describes the role of
communists in American culture.
We no longer have to speculate about whether or not the Soviet Union
actively manipulated the film industry. We have names, code names,
directions, actions – some through decryption, some through the
actual archives of the KGB and GRU, some through reports of agents
like Morris Childs (the second highest ranking member of the
Communist Party USA, who was an FBI agent) and some from the
intelligence services of other communist countries.
An honest telling of this tale would also show why a Hollywood which
once was largely run by patriotic Jewish Americans produced films
both gentle and sympathetic toward Christianity and why a Hollywood
with a much smaller Jewish involvement is so hysterical about `The
Passion of Christ.’ Jewishness and Judaism are not the villains;
communism is the villain.
`Tibet.’ The genocide of the Tibetan people was a direct consequence
of the triumphant of communism in China. The Tibetan Holocaust was
not discovered by Leftist prima donnas like Richard Gere; it was
first exposed by anti-communists in America during the 1950s and
1960s. I first recall eyewitness, horrific accounts in Dr. Schwartz’s
Christian Anti-Communist Crusade.
Why were people like Gere carrying about copies of Mao’s Little Red
Book (aka `Mein Kampf’) by the Tibetan people were being tortured,
imprisoned and exterminated? It was not chic to be anti-communist in
1965, and much more important than trifles like holocausts and
`cultural revolutions’ Leftists were concerned about always being
chic.
`Armenia.’ The first holocaust. The forgotten holocaust. The
un-holocaust. While the world watched – even worse, after the
Himmler, the Heydrich, the Hitler of Turkey had lost the war – at
least one million Armenians were exterminated for their Christian
faith and their misfortune of being a nation conquered by the Moslem
Turks.
This was the laboratory for what was later used in the Gulag by the
Soviets, then used in eastern Poland by the Soviets, then used
against Jews by the Nazis. Moreover, this was a war on Christianity
itself. Churches, priests, crosses all were the first objects of
Turkish atrocities. Nothing ever happened after this holocaust. No
Nuremberg Trials. No `Schindler’s List.’ No `Diary of Anne Frank.’
There cannot be too many descriptions of the very genuine moral and
physical horror of the Holocaust, but each dead soul murdered in the
Killing Fields or the barren fields of the Ukraine or in cattle cars
leaving Poland and crammed with Polish families deserve equal memory
to mankind and to God.
Why not start with the first holocaust? Why not begin with that
calculated sadism which was the First Holocaust, the extermination in
the Twentieth Century of millions of Christians – primarily
Armenians, but also Greeks and others – while the world watched, then
forgot, then pretended never happened? That, Mr. Gibson, would be my
next film, if I were you.
—
Bruce Walker has been a dyed in the wool conservative since, as a
sixth grader, he campaigned door to door for Barry Goldwater. Bruce
has had almost two hundred published articles have appeared several
professional and political periodicals.

iofilm, UK
Aug 17 2004
Edinburgh Film Festival preview
Plenty in treat with typically diverse EIFF 2004
By Rebort

EIFF opening and closing films: The Motorcycle Diaries (top) and E
J-Yong’s Untold Scandal

The glam
Edinburgh is not a big starry event on the level of, say, Cannes, but
still attracts a fair smattering of famous faces. Obvious places for
sleb-spotting are the opening and closing galas. The festival starts
strongly with Walter Salles’ The Motorcycle Diaries, a much feted
adaptation of revolutionary pin-up Che Guevara’s autobiographal
journal about his travels as a young man through South America.
Wong Kar-Wai’s follow-up to his luscious-looking In The Mood For
Love, 2046, was pulled as the closing film, at the last minute,
organisers said, because the film is still not finished. EIFF
artistic director Shane Danielsen quipped it was “one of the pitfalls
of working with eccentric artistic geniuses’. The organisers have
fallen back on E J-Yong’s Untold Scandal, a lavish period remake of
Dangerous Liaisons set in Chosun-period Korea.
The first Saturday of the fest always brings the paparazzi out, with
the world premiere of former EIFF award-winner Pawel Pawlikowski’s My
Summer of Love given the red carpet treatment at the Cameo on
Saturday night, 21 August. Pawlikowski uses his vivid cinematic style
to give a portrait of the blossoming friendship of two 16-year-old
girls during a languid Yorkshire Summer.
Hot tickets
Can’t get tickets to see those galas; or Morgan Spurlock chundering
on his umpteenth McDonald’s meal in Super Size Me; or film stars
puffing away in Jim Jarmusch’s eccentric Coffee and Cigarettes; or
those big waves in Stacy Peralta’s thrilling surf doc Riding Giants?
Don’t give up yet. Extra screenings are often scheduled in for
popular films, tickets for press and guests reallocated and people
don’t pick up tickets. Check with the EIFF box office (full details
at end of this article) what the state of play is. Alternatively,
check out iofilm’s reviews to see if our team has found any gems that
you can see instead – we cover the full programme of films.
Home-grown cinema
Obvious choices: Ken Loach presents Ae Fond Kiss, a Glasgow based
tale of inter-racial romance and Shane Meadows’ dark and gritty Dead
Man’s Shoes, about two brothers returning home to find the same old
drug dealing gangs.
In Hamburg Cell, Antonia Bird dramatises the events leading up to the
September 11 hijackings through the eyes of a young Muslim who
evolves from secular student in Germany, to Islamic ideologue,
jihadist and hijacker. Peter Mullan, a regular at the EIFF, is back
as a blind and jealous landowner caught in a love triangle of sorts
in a drama called Blinded.
Richard Eyre’s tantalising Restoration Comedy, Stage Beauty,
introduces Billy Crudup as the “compleat female actor” until he
becomes overshadowed by his own former dresser (Claire Danes) after
King Charles II (Rupert Everett) changes the law to allow women to
play themselves.
Other world premieres include Irish director Damien O’Donnell’s
Inside I’m Dancing and Terry Loane’s Mickybo and Me.
Kung fu escapes its Asiatic origins and relocates to Scotland, in the
not too distant future in Richard Jobson’s The Purefiers. The title
comes from a gang who having rejected a suspicious truce, find
themselves surrounded on all sides by factions warring to control a
disintegrating Britain. Chop-socky cinema that is one amongst a
fistful of Kung-fu films at the EIFF this year.
Documentary
Fahrenheit 9/11 has not been the only political documentary making
headlines in this US election year. Control Room, directed by Jehane
Noujaim who made the doc Start-up.com, has kept the talk shows stoked
with this embedded view of Al Jazeera, the Arab news service that has
been condemned by the Bush administration as “the mouthpiece of Osama
Bin Laden” and was shut down just days ago by the acting Iraqi
administration for a month.
Filmmakers also aimed their cameras into the darkest corners of human
existence to find stories such as Checkpoint by Yoav Shamir, which
follows the mutual insanity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and
A Social Genocide (Fernando E. Solana), an angry look at the
squandering of Argentina’s national resources. Guerrilla: The Taking
of Patty Hearst (Robert Stone) offers viewers a chance to step back
in time and re-examine the events surrounding the kidnapping of
Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army, an American 1970’s
terrorist militia.
It will be fascinating to see how Thomas Riedelsheimer, who made such
an evocative film about artist Andy Goldsworthy in River of Tides,
conveys the visual and aural harmony of Evelyn Glennie in Touch the
Sound – A Sound Journey. It just won an International Critics Award
at Locarno.
In a similar vein is Armenian filmmaker Harutyun Khachatryan’s
Documentarist where he paints a black-and-white, cinematic mosaic of
life in his ruined homeland.
In Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, the real life hard rockers give
Spinal Tap a run for their money.
The Horror, the Horror
The EIFF has successfully carved out a spot with horror fans with
edgier, late night films. This year includes the world premiere of
American director Chuck Parello’s Hillside Strangler, a true tale of
two “tag-team’ Seventies serial killers (in the Late Night Romps
section of the programme). And Colin Firth wakes from a coma to find
his wife dead and himself implicated in a celebrity murder in
psychological drama Trauma.
Retrospective
The eye in the back of the EIFF head is cast upon Italian director
Valerio Zurlini. “Who’s he?’ You might ask. Between 1955 and 1976,
Zurlini made eight feature films, looking at men and women in crisis.
The retrospective is aptly called “Il Ritrovato: the Rediscovered.”
Commemorating the tenth anniversary of the death of director Lindsay
Anderson, the EIFF will be screening two of his features, O Lucky
Man! (1973) and the Whales of August (1987), and hosting a panel
discussion with a number of Anderson’s creative associates. Actor
Malcolm McDowell, pays tribute to Scottish director Lindsay Anderson
(he made his screen debut in Anderson’s If…(1968) by performing a
one-man show consisting of his personal stories and anecdotes.
Short life
As always, the EIFF programme is chocker with short films, from the
McLaren animation programme to short docs and short form drama,
usually of 5-20 minutes.
Recommendations? Always difficult, but we will have a keen eye on
this year’s three Tartan Shorts – directors often go on from these
prestigious Scottish short fiction pieces to greater things. The EIFF
shorts programmer, who whittled the programme down from 1000 has
these recommendations:
(1) Mona Lisa (Antipodean Shorts Programme)- “A guy lives with his
mother- very low key performances, so simple but well written and
beautifully shot.”
(2) Headway (Nordic Shorts Programme)- “The director (Jens Jonsson)
has done lots of short films. I think he is destined to be the next
big European features director.”
(3) Who Killed Brown Owl (UK Shorts Programme)- “One long take shot
in a summer park. Simply fantastic, everything a short film should
be.”
And there’s more: Mirrorball is back this year with “a mad mix of
music videos, rock documentaries, live events, promos, ads and
animations”. Mirrorball programmers David Drummond and David Ladd
have lined up music videos from Sweden to Australia in Global
Selection, toured to Japan for some commercials, and gathered “the
best of Britain’ (including Basement Jaxx, The Streets and LFO) in
Fresh Tracks.
Latest Edinburgh International Film Festival reviews
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Interfax
Aug 17 2004
Bayerische Landesbank allocating over $50 mln for Armenal overhaul
Yerevan. (Interfax) – The German bank Bayerische Landesbank has
agreed to provide more than $50 million in financing for a
modernization program at Armenal aluminum foil plant in Armenia.
Negotiations with German insurance company Hermes, which will cover
the program should wrap up within a month, General Director at
Russian Aluminum (RusAl) Alexander Livshits announced at a Monday
press conference in Armenia.
On top of the German bank’s input, RusAl will itself be contributing
$20 million as working capital, Livshits said. Of that, $1.5 million
has already been spent on project preparations and readying the plant
for modernization, he said.
Armenal will get a factory for making aluminum foils with maximum
thickness of 0.57mm.
After the Armenal modernization work is completed, the plant will be
put into operation in 2005, Livshits said.