AGENDA – 17 AVRIL: A STORY OF PEOPLE IN WAR AND PEACE
CollectifVAN.org, France
April 5 2007
Vardan Hovhannisyan, 2006
Tuesday 17 April 2007 10.30pm-11.40pm
For his first documentary, Vardan Hovhannisyan returns to a subject
he reported on as a war correspondent: the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.
How have the people fared since the shaky ceasefire of 1994?
Nick Fraser
Storyville Series Editor
The Nagorno Karabakh conflict was a territorial dispute between
Armenia and Azerbaijan which arose around the time of the collapse of
communism in Russia. For a while it had some attention in the West –
then it was forgotten. But the participants never forget.
This is a first, eloquent and ultimately hopeful film made by a
filmmaker who was involved in the conflict as a war correspondent
– Vardan Hovhannisyan. He tracked down all the people he filmed
10 years ago in order to see how they had been affected. His film
footage is remarkable: it could come from the World War I. But then
maybe the essence of war – being bored, killing people, becoming
passionately attached to those people with whom you fight – never
really changes. That seems to be the message of Vardan’s terrific film.