Author: Emil Lazarian

Discomfort over Plan for Webster Comfort Inn
Norwood News, NY
July 14 2006
By ALEX KRATZ
On a recent Friday afternoon, Korean War veteran Harold Hekimian
pointed to the side of his house where sand from the construction
site next door has spilled onto his property, under his porch, into
his basement and onto his backyard.
Wearing a linen bathrobe and sporting a shaved head – the result of
a four-year battle with stomach cancer – Hekimian loudly laments the
imminent arrival of his new neighbor: an 80-room Comfort Inn.
A plywood fence runs suffocatingly close alongside Hekimian’s house
on Webster Avenue between East 202nd and 203rd streets. He can only
imagine how intrusive a five-story motel will be on him and his sister,
Virginia, both in their 70s.
“They’re taking away my oxygen,” Hekimian says, putting his hand to
his chest. “I won’t be able to breathe.”
That same day, June 30, the hotel’s developer, Sam Chang of Floral
Park, received design approval from the Buildings Department for a
five-story, 80-room motel on the slender plot of land wedged tightly
between Hekimian’s house and an auto body shop to the north. Chang has
yet to apply for a building permit, but that’s mostly a formality,
said Jennifer Givner, a spokesperson for the department. All Chang
needs is the proper insurance documents and the permit will almost
certainly be granted, Givner said.
Queens architect Michael Kang, who designed the motel and has worked
with Chang for 12 years on other New York hotel projects, refused to
offer any details about the hotel without the developer’s permission.
Chang specializes in low-cost hotels and has constructed more than
30 in New York, mostly in Manhattan. As of publication, Chang failed
to return several calls from the Norwood News.
Because the area is zoned for heavy commercial buildings, Chang’s
development company, McSam LLC, has a right to build the hotel
regardless of community opposition.
“They have an ‘as of right’,” said Rita Kessler, the district manager
for Community Board 7, talking about the developer’s “right” to build
on commercially zoned Webster. “But we’re going to fight them.”
At a Board 7 Land Use Committee meeting two weeks ago, Chang sent
his lawyer, Patrick Jones, to discuss the project with Board members.
Kessler and other members peppered the lawyer with questions.
“He had no answers for anything,” Kessler said.
Instead, the lawyer jotted down questions in his notebook and said he
would bring them up with his boss. Kessler also gave Jones something
else to give to Chang – a copy of a petition, created by the Hekimians,
with more than 800 signatures of people opposing the new motel.
With PS/MS 20 just a stone’s throw away, Kessler and others are
concerned about who will inhabit the rooms and what they will be used
for. The motel will be available for short-stay rentals, Kessler said,
meaning customers will be able to rent rooms for less than four hours
at a time.
“Webster certainly is not a tourist attraction,” Kessler said, adding
that she’s concerned the hotel will also be used to house the homeless.
Father Richard Gorman, chair of Community Board 12, sympathizes with
the community’s plight. He’s fought against what he describes as
“no tell motels” or “hot sheet motels” for more than a decade.
Gorman says a motel like Chang’s in an area like Webster Avenue is
only designed for two types of people – drug addicts and prostitutes
looking for a private place to conduct illegal activities or homeless
families sent there by the city because there is nowhere else to put
them. The city pays out of the way motels up to $90 a night to house
homeless families, Gorman says.
Recently, Gorman says, there was a brutal murder in one of the dozen
motels in his district in the northeast Bronx. The community has
been cut out of the approval process, Gorman says, even when motel
developments directly affect the community surrounding it. “To have
it across the street from a school, I would be very concerned,”
Gorman says.
Barbara Rondon, who has worked at PS/MS 20 for the past 10 years
and lives in the area, agreed. “We don’t need that [a motel] here,”
she said. “We’re trying to bring this area up, not bring it back down.”
Back on Hekimian’s porch, Harold says “hello” and smiles to everyone
passing by on the sidewalk. Both he and his sister were born in
this house. Their parents, Armenian immigrants, fled Turkish death
squads in 1915 and ended up here in Norwood in 1927. The Hekimians
remember when Webster was a narrow cobblestone road trafficked with
horse carriages. Virginia points to where the family’s lush green
lawn spread out to what is now gray concrete.
Harold Hekimian looks out from his porch and sweeps his hand over the
neighborhood – a place where the siblings now have myriad immigrant
friends, mostly young families, from places like Ghana and Chile.
They could be the next Hekimians.
“We’re used to it here,” Hekimian says. “Where are we going to go?”
“But Harold,” Virginia says, “you’re not going to like it here when
the motel comes.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Review: Arts: Beauty and harmony: In today’s climate of cultural
conflict, the V&A’s spectacular new gallery of artefacts from all
across the Islamic world reveals less a clash of civilisations than a
refreshing union of east and west, discovers Jason Ell
The Guardian – United Kingdom; Jul 15, 2006
JASON ELLIOT
A transformation has occurred at the V&A. This week, after three
years of renovation and redesign, the new Jameel gallery of Islamic
art will open its doors to the public with a spectacular collection
of artefacts from across the Islamic world, many of which have never
before been seen on display.
The new gallery, dedicated to the memory of its Saudi benefactor,
Abdul Latif Jameel, is both timely and long overdue. Visitors to
the V&A’s former Middle Eastern display of Islamic art may recall
a confusingly structured and poorly lit collection of disparate
artefacts, overlooked by the sombre and greenish presence of a giant
carpet. This – the famous Ardabil carpet – was said to be one of the
finest Persian carpets in the world. However, it looked more like
something dredged from a pond.
All this has changed. A spectacularly reconfigured display of over
400 objects from the museum’s 10,000-piece Islamic collections,
sensitively interpreted by senior curator Tim Stanley, now looks set
to rival comparable collections around the world. The centrepiece
of the gallery is none other than the Ardabil carpet, rescued from
its former gloom and ingeniously displayed at floor level, as was
originally intended by its 16th-century makers.
Rebuilding the entire gallery around the 50-square-metre marvel
imposed multiple challenges on designers. The greatest of these was
to allow the carpet to be viewed horizontally, but to protect it
from undue levels of light and dust. The innovative solution has
been to surround it with an enclosure of non-reflective glass (be
careful – it’s almost invisible), free of structural supports. This
is made possible by a giant protective canopy above the glass walls,
fitted with fibre-optic lighting and suspended by steel cables from
the ceiling joists overhead. At long last, the delicate colours and
intricacy of the carpet’s pattern – created from a staggering 30m
hand-tied knots – may now be appreciated at close quarters.
The Ardabil carpet is also a reminder of the days when the appreciation
of things Islamic was less eclipsed by political issues. To William
Morris, who in 1893 petitioned for its purchase from a London dealer,
the “singular perfection” of the Ardabil carpet was an inspiration: “To
us pattern-designers,” he wrote, “Persia has become a holy land.” Other
designers, such as Owen Jones and William De Morgan – whose iridescent
tiles imitated techniques pioneered by Muslim artists a thousand years
earlier – were at the forefront of a European fascination with Islamic
design. Their enthusiasm encouraged the building of English country
homes based on Mogul architecture, pavilions in the oriental style,
and many a Turkish smoking-room and Moorish conservatory around
the capital.
The European attraction to Islamic art did not, of course, begin
in the 19th century. Throughout the middle ages, highly prized
specimens of Islamic craftsmanship entered the treasuries of churches
and aristocratic homes, both through trade and as booty. European
monarchs were crowned in robes woven in Sicily, one of the great
creative workshops of the Muslim artist; Fatimid rock crystal ewers
from north Africa were used to display Christian relics; and Turkish
and Persian rugs were favoured as royal wedding presents.
Fine examples of all these luxury goods are to be found in the
gallery. Others, such as the lustre ceramics produced in 15th-century
Spain and Italian inlaid metalwork called Veneto-Saracenic, testify to
a fertile exchange of artistic techniques between Muslim and Christian
cultures of the Mediterranean. In the eastern Islamic lands, too,
styles and technologies from China were taken up and developed by
Iranian artisans, whose ingenuity underpinned the art of the later
Mogul and Ottoman empires.
In today’s climate of cultural divisiveness, this sense of
interconnectedness is refreshing. It suggests for Islamic art a global
significance, and tells not so much of a clash of civilisations, but of
a resounding chorus. Islamic art is, after all, probably the world’s
greatest artistic success story. Soon after the earliest Islamic
conquests of the Middle East in the late seventh century, artists
drawing on the existing traditions of the region began to produce
art and architecture with its own distinctive personality. Easily
differentiated from its Greco-Roman and Hellenistic predecessors,
it spread through the burgeoning empire with extraordinary speed. The
universal appeal and adaptability of this new artistic mode allowed
its themes and principles to be taken up by artists from the Atlantic
coast to the Gobi desert, enriching thereby the vast and intervening
blocs of culture.
The Arab, Turkish, Persian and central Asian contributions to
Islamic art are all represented in the new V&A gallery, and there
are outstanding examples from each. Visitors can admire giant Qur’an
pages commissioned for Mamluk sultans, swollen with monumental
lines of exquisite calligraphy, or marvel at Timurid-era miniature
paintings composed with microscopic precision. There is a series of
large-scale 19th-century oil paintings from Iran (unseen for decades),
and a dramatic wall-sized display of glazed tilework from 14th-century
Uzbekistan. One of the tiles from a 14th-century tomb near Bokhara,
deeply incised with swirling shades of green and turquoise, has been
deliberately exposed to the visitor’s touch. The towering minbar, or
staired mosque-pulpit, dedicated to a 15th-century Egyptian sovereign,
is a masterpiece of geometric design in wood and ivory. And there is
a dazzling display of vibrant ceramics from the famous Turkish centre
of Iznik, including a large tilework chimney-piece dedicated to the
myth of the Seven Sleepers. All these treasures are reminders of
the high level of patronage afforded to the Muslim craftsman across
enormous expanses of time and territory.
Between all these stretches a broad spectrum of lesser but fascinating
treasures. These are dominated by fabrics and ceramics, but include
fine examples of astrolabes and compasses, inlaid candlesticks,
vases and ewers, ivory caskets, enamelled and gilt mosque lamps,
bookbindings, embroidered robes, stained glass, daggers and begging
bowls, as well as some rare and touching pieces such as the silken
vestment woven in Isfahan for an Armenian church, and a child’s
funerary kaftan from Turkey.
Despite the diverse styles of Islamic art, and the astonishing variety
of media in which the skill of the traditional Muslim artist has
been expressed, there are unifying factors that make it immediately
distinctive. All Islamic art aims for beauty based on coherence
and harmony. The saying of the Prophet Muhammad, “God is beautiful
and He loves beauty”, orients the artist’s aesthetic ideal; and the
Qur’anic emphasis on the fundamental goodness and significance of life
informs the goal of creating works of art that will reflect the order,
goodness and purpose of creation itself.
The expression of this vision relies on a distinct and threefold
visual structure, to which a series of panels in the gallery is
very usefully dedicated. The first of these is calligraphy: for the
faithful, the graceful ciphers of the Arabic script transmit the voice
of the Divine, and are the substance of revelation made visible. In
no other art form has the written word taken on such an exalted role;
sultans and peasants alike strove to learn its many styles, which
became disciplines in themselves, and around which an entire science
of numerological symbolism evolved. The second is geometric design,
brilliantly exploited in endless variations – intellectually enticing
and puzzling at the same time. The third panel offers examples of
idealised plant shapes drawn from the natural world: tendrils, vines,
buds and flowers, all alluding to the fecundity and abundance of
nature, and symbolically linked to the Qur’anic evocation of paradise
as a luxuriant garden.
At the simplest level, these elements comprise the fundamental
repertoire of the traditional artist; at a profounder level, they
celebrate the relationship between God, man and nature. They are to
some extent mutable – geometric patterns can form letters, and letters
can be used to create pictures – and are combined in almost infinite
and sophisticated variations of immense beauty. Great art, according
to Ruskin, “is that in which the hand, the head and the heart of man
go together”; it is precisely this insight that was so well understood
by the traditional Muslim artist, whose finest works simultaneously
appeal to the devotional, intellectual and aesthetic sensibilities of
the onlooker. The most refined expressions of this exacting discipline
– whether carved on to a paper-thin dried leaf or stretched across a
monumental facade – are thus transformed from objects of mere visual
delight into powerful focuses of spiritual contemplation.
Recent scholarship has also begun to delve into the Muslim artist’s
use of geometric principles in designs as diverse as the layout
of pages of the Qur’an to the structure of entire mosques. Behind
these lie aesthetic as well as symbolic considerations, reflecting a
reverence throughout Islamic cultures for the philosophical dimension
of mathematics, for numbers and the shapes derived from them. In
this sense, Islamic art extends a fascinating bridge between the
intellectual heritages of east and west, and throws light on the
Islamic role as a transmitter of classical learning into Europe
through the medium of Arab culture. Despite the “exotic” attraction
of many of the motifs and styles used in Islamic art, deeper study
reveals a more rational foundation, coherent and rigorously structured.
The enormous challenge of designing a gallery in which to order
meaningfully artefacts produced over a span of 1,000 years and three
continents has been diligently met. Roughly speaking, the Jameel
gallery is divided in half between artefacts with either a secular or
a religious function. This is a problematic but necessary dichotomy,
since the whole of Islam is underpinned by a theocentric vision,
wherein the worldly and spiritual are not so forcefully divided
as in other forms of belief. But the looseness of this separation
deliberately highlights a common misconception about Islamic art as
a whole. While it is true that art destined for an overtly religious
context rarely contains images of human forms, many of the items
on display prove that Islam’s doctrinal “ban” on graven imagery –
originally a Jewish tradition, absorbed into Islam in its earliest
years – was interpreted differently at different times, rather than
explicitly laid down in the Qur’an.
Along its length the gallery traces a historical line, with the
earliest exhibits nearest the entrance. Here, Roman capitals and
Sassanian vases from the pre-Islamic period suggest how Is lamic
artisans took up existing artistic prototypes and shaped them to the
evolving vision of the Muslim world.
One important characteristic of the gallery is the interpretive
support available to the visitor. There are interactive maps showing
the territorial extent of Islamic cultures; several videos expand
on themes of religious and courtly patronage; and poetry from the
Shahnameh of Ferdowsi can be heard alongside a display of inscribed
tiles. Attention is also drawn to the limitations of the term “Islamic
art” to describe the artistic output of such diverse cultures; and
the care that has gone into the displays themselves is immediately
obvious. Colour and light abound.
A critic might draw attention to the predominance of ceramics, or
to the lack of musical or scientific instruments – both pioneering
achievements of the Islamic Middle East. But the gallery does not
claim to be exhaustive, and has attempted not to acquire new material,
but to re-explore its existing holdings. It has put one of its most
generous donations to excellent use. It also demonstrates just how far
the western understanding of this complex artistic heritage has evolved
since the days of the museum’s earliest collectors. It will be the envy
of the museum’s other galleries and of collections internationally,
and, 150 years on, will amply fulfil the V&A’s original writ to bring
the splendour and richness of Islamic art to the greater world.
The new Jameel gallery opens at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London
SW7, on July 20. Details: 020-7942 2000. Jason Elliot’s most recent
book is Mirrors of the Unseen: Journeys in Iran (Picador).
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Azeri opposition daily lambasts US mediator for Karabakh remarks
Yeni Musavat, Baku
14 Jul 06
An Azerbaijani opposition daily has criticized the new US mediator
for the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict for ignoring the public opinion in
Azerbaijan and insisting on a referendum on the breakaway region’s
legal status. The paper said that the US co-chairman of the OSCE
Minsk Group, Matthew Bryza, was confident that the Azerbaijani
government could quell any public opposition to an agreement with
Armenia on holding a referendum in Nagornyy Karabakh. The following
is the text of Alya’s report in Azerbaijani newspaper Yeni Musavat
on 14 July entitled “Who should make Bryza silent?”:
[US co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group] Matthew Bryza has again
spoken about a referendum in Adana [in Turkey]. A couple of hours
before the final completion of the USA’s useless project, i.e. the
opening ceremony of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, he gave
an interview to journalists to say that there was no other way to
settle the Karabakh problem and that the [Azerbaijani and Armenian]
presidents should persuade their peoples to agree to this idea
[referendum on Nagornyy Karabakh’s status].
It emerged that the new co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group is absolutely
indifferent to the public opinion outside the USA. This means that
Matthew Bryza could not care less about the negative attitude of the
Azerbaijani people towards the referendum. How else can one assess the
statements by Bryza who is obstinately insisting on the referendum
even after seeing the negative public reaction following his first
statement? Even if he had not noticed this negative reaction, he
should have guessed because of his official post that like other
world nations, the people of Azerbaijan will protest resolutely
against the proposal to cede their lands.
As it is out of the question that the new mediator, who joined the
Karabakh settlement process late but fervently, knows nothing about
such simple matters, his behaviour might also be explained by the
fact that he regards as insignificant both the public opinion in
Azerbaijan and our reaction to the issue.
Why? Is it because he is confident that the authorities can at
any time (for example, after [Azerbaijani President] Ilham Aliyev
consents to sign a peace agreement on holding a referendum) quell any
opposition, or does he consider that we are not strong and decisive
enough? In my view, we should now think more about this rather than
the international situation that can make a peace agreement possible
or impossible.
True, for the time being it is a decisive factor that Russia is not
interested in the resolution of the Karabakh problem. But there is
no guarantee that the situation will not change. Russia might one
day compromise Azerbaijan to its eternal rival as it compromised
Afghanistan and conceded Iraq to the USA after its international
position was shaken. The history has seen many events which once
seemed unlikely.
The matter has another unpleasant aspect – it is international factors
that have turned Karabakh into a subject of endless bargaining;
Ilham Aliyev was permitted to commit election fraud precisely as a
result of this bargaining; it
is this bargaining that holds back Azerbaijan’s development and
has doomed
us to live under the tyranny of a repressive and corrupt regime. We
have been onlookers of this bargaining for many years and we
have been feeling the growing damage of it with every cell of our
body. If we finally want to put an end to it, we should think about
eliminating the reasons behind this attitude rather than being
surprised at the occupying boldness and demonstrative disrespect
of Bush’s envoys. There is no need for tedious pondering and long
research. We simply must get rid of our status of onlookers, stop
bowing to officials from a district police officer to Ilham Aliyev,
and remove animal fear from our hearts.
Given our “qualities”, we should not be surprised at what is
happening. Do we not know that we are “a bit” weak in putting up
resistance? Those on the other shores of the ocean probably know this
better than we do. Maybe they hesitated at the beginning. But after
seeing that we show endurance to the most brutal election violence
and the worst methods of pillage, they have calmed down and began
to seek Ilham Aliyev’s consent only.
They were very anxious after the 2003 presidential election. They
arrived in Baku under the guise of experts of some international
organization and asked representatives of NGOs and of various layers
of society and politicians probing questions. They asked everyone:
“Do you think the election could lead to growing terrorist moods and
Islamic fundamentalism in Azerbaijan?” They tried to find out how
real was the danger of a civil war. I myself came across one of them
at one of those meetings. He insisted that I should tell him if a
civil war was possible in five or 10 years. In fact, his questions
made me laugh because just a month had passed since the 16 October
[2003 presidential election] events and I still remembered well what
part (percentage) of my dear Azerbaijani people could dare to fight.
I still remember it. The reason people like Steven Mann, Matthew
Bryza and others are coming to us demanding that we “concede Karabakh”
is that there were
few of us on that day. Those “brave boys” – “impartial” and
“honest” who
claimed that we were born to fight not them [referring to ANS TV
and radio] – dared to call us “violent” because there were few of
us on that day. But the situation has not changed yet.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Trapped, scared and begging to come home
Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
July 16 2006
Young Australians trapped in the siege of Lebanon have made a desperate
plea for the Government to bring them home as the Hezbollah Islamist
guerilla group declared “open war” on Israel.
More than 50 teenage dancers and their families, among 2200 Australians
travelling in Lebanon, were last night holed up in a hotel in downtown
Beirut listening to an escalation in the Israeli bombardment of
the city.
The leaders of the Armenian Sydney Dance Company said they were afraid
and running out of money to pay for food.
“We need help to get out of this country. Please, before it gets
worse,” said Maggie Kasparian, one of the parents leading the troupe.
Worried relatives in Sydney called on the Government to “pull their
fingers out” and bring them home.
A number of other Australians tried to drive to Syria to catch
flights to Bahrain, but they were being refused entry. They also
risked Israeli air attacks on the Beirut-Damascus highway.
Other countries have started evacuating citizens. In response to the
dramatic spike in violence yesterday, the US used marines to move
Americans to Cyprus.
At least nine civilians were killed and dozens wounded in Israeli
attacks yesterday, raising the death toll to 73 since the start of
the offensive.
An Israeli navy ship was set ablaze off the coast of Beirut and four
Israeli troops were missing after being struck by an unmanned drone
packed with explosives.
Three Sydney men holidaying in Lebanon face being conscripted into
the Lebanese army and forced to fight on the frontline if Lebanon
decides to defend itself against the Israeli attacks.
Ziad Adasi, 25, Anthony El Fanj, 22, and his friend Nabil Saray Eldin,
22, could be forced to perform six months’ compulsory military service
because they hold dual citizenship.
“The Government should do something about this,” Ms Kasparian said.
“We are very tired – and we want to go home.”
A spokeswoman for the Foreign Department said yesterday: “The
Government is looking at possible options for evacuation if the
security situation allows.
“At this stage the best advice is to remain in secure locations
indoors, monitor the media and follow the instructions of local
authorities.”
The Australian embassy in Beirut reopened yesterday. Families in
Australia who could not make contact with loved ones in Lebanon can
phone 1800 002 214.
Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd called on Foreign
Minister Alexander Downer to marshall every available bureaucrat to
help Australians caught up in the turmoil.
Prime Minister John Howard backed Israel in its “war” with Lebanon
and said it was clear Hezbollah started the conflict. “I do believe
Israel is justified in defending herself,” Mr Howard said yesterday.
Fears the conflict could expand into a region-wide war grew when
Syria declared its support for Lebanon.
There is no end to the conflict in sight with the United Nations
Security Council failing to act on Beirut’s demand for an immediate
end to Israeli attacks on its territory.
WAR OF WORDS
“You wanted open war. We are going to open war.”
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah (left) after his apartment
building in Beirut was destroyed by an Israeli air strike.
“The Syrian people are ready to extend full support to the Lebanese
people and their heroic resistance to remain steadfast and confront
the barbaric Israeli aggression and its crimes.”
Communique from Syria’s ruling Baath party.
“I do believe Israel is justified in defending herself.”
Prime Minister John Howard.
“I call on him to make sure that his department has all hands on deck
to provide consular support to these tens of thousands of Australians.”
Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd urges Foreign Minister
Alexander Downer to act to assist Australian citizens.
“No. The President is not going to make military decisions for
Israel.” White House spokesman Tony Snow when asked whether US
President George Bush had agreed to a request from Lebanon to rein
in the Israelis.
“We are being asked to stop Hezbollah, but no one is putting the
necessary pressure on Israel to stop the problem.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Director chronicles wife’s return
BBC News
July 15 2006
Atom Egoyan’s The Citadel is only receiving a limited release
Canadian-Armenian director Atom Egoyan has taken a major departure
from his intense and often controversial dramas in his new film –
a documentary in which he follows his wife on her first return to
Lebanon in 28 years.
The director is best-known for making the sexually explicit Hollywood
drama Where The Truth Lies – which starred Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon
– and the controversial film Ararat, which explored the real-life
massacre of ethnic Armenians by the Ottoman Empire over four years
from 1915.
The Citadel, however, is a much more personal project, in which he
follows his actress wife returning to her home in Lebanon after a 28
year absence.
“I remembered this footage that I shot on this family vacation to
Beirut – and suddenly I put that into my computer, and I started
playing around with it,” Egoyan told BBC World Service’s The Ticket
programme.
“I came up with this idea of having it as a voiceover, and constructing
a letter to our son – talking about his parents’ relationship –
as a sort of time capsule, something he might watch in 10 years or so.
“So it’s an examination of a number of relationships – parent to child
and husband to wife – but also about a woman returning to a city she
had to leave 28 years ago in the midst of the civil war.”
Exciting technology
Egoyan admitted The Citadel is an “odd piece” – and that originally
he had not imagined it would be shown to anyone else.
He explained that he has been filming his wife on and off for 20 years
– and that one of the things he hoped The Citadel would explain to
his son is this “strange relationship.”
I think if this technology was available when Beckett was alive, it
is something he certainly would have played with
Atom Egoyan “It’s also an opportunity in some ways to look at what
the dynamics of that relationship are – where one part of the couple
is being watched with such a degree of scrutiny all the time,” he said.
“That can be very affectionate – as I think it is – but through the
device of the voiceover I’m able to analyse my own motivation for
doing that.”
He admitted, however, that his wife is not often very comfortable with
being filmed, and this is one of the reasons the film will receive
only a limited distribution.
Meanwhile, Egoyan explained that The Citadel was one of a number of
documentaries he feels are changing modern cinema, in particular in
contrast with formulaic mainstream content.
“It’s such an exciting time, because of the technology and the fact
that people can record things so easily,” he said.
“There was such mystification over how images are made – which is one
of the secrets Hollywood was able to guard for so long. But now you
can have colour, and synchronised, Dolby sound, with a consumer camera.
“The Citadel was shot on mini-DV with a handheld camera, and the
quality is astounding.”
Love of Beckett
He has similarly employed this love of new technology in a new
version of the Samuel Beckett play Eh Joe, originally written for
BBC television in 1958.
The play consists of a single camera shot in which a man is alone in
a room. The camera draws ever closer to his face over 30 minutes,
as a woman in the background is heard chastising him with the idea
that he could forget her.
“I loved this piece from the moment I read it in my teens – and most
people don’t know the text, so I thought there had to be a way of
bringing it back to a new public,” Egoyan said.
“It’s possible with the new technologies that you could have a live
actor, on stage, behind a scrim – a material that can hold an image
and yet allows you to see through it.
“If you have a camera with a long lens in the wings, observe Beckett’s
specific instructions – but you simultaneously project that on the
scrim. I think if this technology was available when Beckett was alive,
it is something he certainly would have played with.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

NATO PA Not Going to Substitute OSCE Format
PanARMENIAN.Net
14.07.2006 16:01 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ “If Pierre Lellouche expresses his thoughts we
are ready to discuss them, but it will not mean that the NATO PA
wishes to substitute the OSCE MG format,” Armenian Foreign Minister
Vartan Oskanian said when commenting on the information that NATO
Parliamentary Assembly President Pierre Lellouche has organized
proposals on Karabakh settlement for the Armenian and Azerbaijani
Presidents. “It makes no sense speaking of replacement of the OSCE
Minsk Group,” he said adding that though Nagorno Karabakh doesn’t
immediately participate in the talks the NKR authorities are completely
aware of all the moves taken on the issue.
Referring to Baku’s statements on arsons on the territories around
Nagorno Karabakh allegedly set by the Armenian side, the RA FM said,
” We will not play their game. An international organization, I will
not name it, requested us to clarify the situation and I replied
rather strictly that we have no time to react to statements of the
kind and play Baku’s game. A monitoring was conducted and it showed
the real state of things,” Vartan Oskanian said, reported IA Regnum.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

ANPP Discontented from Power System Today
PanARMENIAN.Net
14.07.2006 16:37 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Armenian Nuclear Power Plant was disconnected
from the power system this morning. This did not cause any deflection
from the norms of nuclear and radioactive security, said the head
of the RA State Atomic Energy Commission Ashot Martirosyan. He
confirmed that a breakdown took place in the Armenian energy system
today. “It has not been clarified yet whether the ANPP disconnected
over a breakdown or the breakdown was caused by the disconnection
of the plant from the power system,” he said adding that there is no
emergency situation and the technical security is ensured.
To note, this morning the center of Yerevan was de-energized and a
number of enterprises suspended work.

Armenian Officers Carried Out Great Deal of Work for Rescuer 2006 Preparation
PanARMENIAN.Net
14.07.2006 19:36 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ “Armenian officers carried out a great deal of work
for the preparation of Rescuer 2006 exercise,” U.S. Ambassador John
Evans said at the ceremony marking the opening of the exercise. He
thanked the exercise participants and noted the importance of
international cooperation in the field of disaster response
and humanitarian assistance. Ambassador Evans stated that the
NATO-Armenian cooperation was continuing to strengthen and deepen,
and expressed hope that Armenia and NATO’s Partnership for Peace
program would continue such valuable collaboration in the future.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

AZG Armenian Daily #132, 15/07/2006
Presidential Sitting
RA PRESIDENT HOLDS FIRST SITTING OF COMMISSION FOR
COORDINATING COOPERATION WITH EUROPEAN STRUCTURES
Today, RA President Robert Kocharian held the first sitting of
the Commission for Coordinating Cooperation with the European
Structures. The Press Service of RA President informed that Tigran
Torosian, Speaker of RA National Assembly, Serge Sargsian, RA
Defence Minister, Vartan Oskanian, RA Foreign Minister, and Karen
Tchshmaritian, RA Trade and Economic Development Minister, participated
in the sitting. Opening the sitting, Mr. Kocharian stated that on the
path of implementing the commitments Armenia undertook before EU,
CE and NATO, there occurred the necessity to coordinate the steps
that our country is to take.
In his turn, Mr. Torosian emphasized that the adoption of the laws
conditioned by the new points in RA Constitution is a priority issue
for Armenia. Mr.
Oskanian and Mr. Sargsian represented the results of their recent
visit to Brussels where they discussed the Armenian IPAP within the
framework of cooperation with NATO.
Mr. Kocharian instructed the working group to elaborate the a concrete
program and the schedule for the arrangements for implementation of
Armenia’s commitments to the European structures.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

AZG Armenian Daily #132, 15/07/2006
Economic Cooperation
MICHAEL WEINSTEIN: IN 2006 EUROPEAN BANK FOR
RECONSTRUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT TO DOUBLE CREDIT
ALLOCATIONS FOR ARMENIA
In 2006, the European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development will allocate EURO 40 million of credit to
Armenia, against EURO 20 million allocated last year.
Michael Weinstein, Head of EBRD Office in Yerevan,
stated at today’s press conference.
He said that till now, excluding the $28 millions of
credit allocated for the renovation works of
“Zvartnots” airport, the bank has allocated additional
EURO 28 million for implementation of 9 new projects.
Earlier, ERBD had allocated 11 new projects in the
private sector of Armenia.
Armenia began cooperating with EBRD in 1992. As of
June 2006, the volume of the allocated credits made
EURO 102 million.
By Ara Martirosian
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress