Author: Kajoyan Gevork

Giorgi Gvimradze: Russia’s fate hangs in the balance in Ukraine

ArmInfo’s interview with Giorgi Gvimradze, expert at the Tbilisi-based
Center for Strategic Studies

by David Stepanyan

ARMINFO
Saturday, September 13, 16:34

As it was expected, during the NATO summit in Wales on 4-5 September
Georgia did not get the MAP -the roadmap for joining NATO. Meanwhile,
after the war 08.08.08 the security of Georgia has found itself to be
more exposed to the new risks. Moreover, as the Wales summit has
shown, the expectations of Tbilisi from the side of its partners to
create at least the outlines of a general security system, and to
involve NATO in the Caucasus affairs more, have not become true. What
are Georgia’s expectations from NATO today?

Georgia did not expect to get MAP at the Wales summit, which was not
dedicated to NATO extension. Certainly, some part of the Georgian
society had such sexed up expectations from the summit. However, our
government did everything possible not to have such expectations. On
the other hand, Georgia got from the summit closer cooperation in
security sphere. Moreover, a military and training centre with NATO
instructors and certain contingent will be opened in Georgia. This
cooperation should help enhance the national defence capacity of
Georgia and come closer to the NATO standards, which will promote
Georgia’s membership in NATO. Thus, the expectations of Georgia from
further integration with NATO are positive and realistic.

After Georgian Dream came to power in Georgiam Tbilisi’s rhetoric
regarding Moscow has softened and certain warming of relations has
been observed. May the dialogue develop to a level necessary to make
any agreements in the security field?

Despite certain improvement of relations with Moscow after coming of
the “Georgian dream” to power in Georgia, at present the level of the
relations has not reached the needed degree for signing of the
Russia-Georgia security agreements. Moreover, I don’t think that the
thaw in relations will ever reach this level of confidence. Anyway,
everything depends on Russia’s actions in Ukraine. That is to say,
Russia’s fate hangs in the balance just in Ukraine, either it will
remain an active member of the European politics, or the process of
its alienation will go on developing. As a result, Russia’s aggressive
actions against its neighbors will grow much. That is to say,
formally, certain agreements may be reached, but they will hardly act.

May the global Russia-West confrontation spillover from Ukraine to the
territory of other post-Soviet countries that “are hesitating” about
their geo-political choice?

Georgia is not hesitating about its geo-political choice. Tbilisi
insists on the Euroatlantic integration. Certainly, Russia’s actions
in Ukraine are disturbing, as a result, a threat to the security of
the post-Soviet countries is growing, especially for such countries as
Georgia and Moldova, which have got an agenda of the foreign policy
independent from Russia. But other countries as well have no reason to
live calmly. I would like simply to remind you of the statement by
president of Russia about Kazakhstan when making a speech at the youth
camp, and other examples.

In August 2014 the Defense Ministers of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey
– Irakli Alasania, Zakir Hasanov and Ismet Yilmaz – met in Nakhijevan.
The ministers discussed issues related to defense of communication
infrastructure, particularly, communication facilities, railway
tracks, and strategic pipelines in time of war. The participants took
a decision to hold such consultations regularly. The meeting caused a
surge of emotion in Baku, which predicts the fiasco of Armenia and
Nagorno-Karabakh. What are Tbilisi’s expectations from such
anti-Armenian union?

I think it is unacceptable to call the alliance of Georgia, Turkey and
Azerbaijan an anti-Armenian alliance because Georgia is also a member
of the alliance. I want to assure you that Georgia cooperates against
no country, especially, against Armenia. Georgian does not do it even
against Russia, which is occupying Georgia’s territories. As regards
the specified alliance, you perfectly know how much Georgia
appreciates its relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey.

The Turkey-Georgia-Azerbaijan corridor is of strategic importance to
Georgia. Certainly, the cooperation with these countries matters
much, especially given that Turkey is a NATO member. Notwithstanding
the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the conflict between
Armenia and Turkey, Georgia values its bilateral and multilateral
partner relations with all these countries.

Armenia is preparing to access EEU. Georgia has been orienting its
economy at Europe after signing DCFTA. Is it reasonable for Georgia to
refuse the possibilities of the Russian marker and how it may affect
the economic cooperation of Armenia ands Georgia?

Although a certain part of the DCFTA has been already working,
Georgia-Russia trade and economic relations are just growing.
Therefore, at this stage Georgia is not going to fully refuse the
Russian market. It has turned out that the European countries
themselves should not trade with Russia, though we do not see that,
but mutual sanctions of the European Union and Russia. So, the trade
and economic relations between Georgia and Russia may stop only if the
leadership of these countries have the will to stop them. To be more
correct, if they have a will not to continue them. Despite the new
obstacles between Tbilisi and Yerevan because of Armenia’s intention
to join the Eurasian Economic Union, taking into consideration
coincidence of interests of the two countries, the Georgians and
Armenians will be able to overcome new economic barriers.

L. Hayrapetyan’s lawyers to appeal court decision on arrest extension

Saturday, September 13

L. Hayrapetyan’s lawyers to appeal court decision on arrest extension

The lawyers of businessman and public figure Levon Hayrapetyan, one of
the wealthiest Armenian businessmen in the world, will appeal against
the decision of Moscow’s Basmanny court to extend his detention until
December 15, 2014, Hayrapetyan’s lawyer Igor Komarov said.

The lawyers will ask the court to replace the businessman’s
imprisonment with house arrest. “Hayrapetyan’s health may considerably
deteriorate if he is held in custody,” Komarov explained.

RIA Novosti reported on September 12 that Basmanny court extended
Levon Hayrapetyan’s arrest. The court made such a decision despite his
lawyers’ statement that L. Hayrapetyan suffers from several serious
diseases and may not survive in prison conditions. A bail of 30
million rubles and guarantees of authoritative persons were offered.

It also became known at the court sitting yesterday that a second
criminal case was opened against Levon Hayrapetyan.

Russia’s Federal Security Service detained Levon Hayrapetyan, 65, on
July 15, 2014 after his plane from Nice landed at Domodedovo Airport
of Moscow. The businessman is now held in custody. He denies the
charges brought against him.

Aghayan fairytale-based “Anahit” animation to premiere in December

September 13, 2014 – 16:40 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net – Anahit animation film, based on beloved folklorist
Ghazaros Aghayan’s fairytale, will premiere in early December, the
film co-author toldPanARMENIAN.Net

According to David Sahakyants, with film production mostly finalized,
the animation will be shown in cinemas during a month, to be followed
by a festival tour.

“We received an invitation to participate in Toronto Festival, yet had
to refuse because of timing: the festival is due in November, while
the film will debut in December,” Sahakyants, who didn’t rule out
participation next year, said.

Production on the animation, financed by the Ministry of Culture,
launched back in 2010, scheduled to be completed in 2012 but delayed
over additional episodes that required filming.

The stellar voice cast of Anahit includes Rafael Kotanjyan, Hrant
Tokhatyan, Shushan Petrosyan, Nazeni Hovhannisyan, Mkrtich Arzumanyan,
David Babayan, Vardan Zadoyan, Khoren Levonyan.

The film soundtrack includes songs by Shushan Petrosyan, Gor Sujyan,
Tigran Petrosyan, Nick Egibyan, Hasmik Karapetyan and Akunq
ethnographic ensemble.

“Upon completion of production, we’ll apply to a number of festivals
for participation. After dubbing, the film will be screened in Russia,
with the authors planning an English-language version as well,”
Sahakyants said.

Armenia needs new government model to ensure checks and balances – opinion

11:36 * 13.09.14

In an interview with Tert.am, a former prime minister of Armenia,
Khosrov Harutyunyan, stressed the importance of adopting the
parliamentary government model in the country, considering it an
effective tool of ensuring appropriate checks and balances.

The politician, who now represents the ruling Republican faction in
parliament, said he does not expect the proposed reform alone to rule
out the authorities’ further chances of reproduction unless the
mechanisms in question are properly enforced to eliminate the existing
divide between the governing and non-governing political forces.

Harutyunyan brought the example of Finland where he said the
Social-Democrats were in power for 36 years, without anyone ever
thinking that such a lengthy period of rule was a political monopoly.
“And that’s because there are serious tools of checks and balances. So
that’s what we have to think about now given that the political divide
is very often between the political majority and minority rather than
the executive and the legislative authorities. Whenever the Government
forms the political majority, it becomes the same team. So that’s why
it is now important to look for the restraint mechanisms among the
majority and minority [forces] in parliament,” he explained.

Armenian News – Tert.am

ADIEU OSVANNA
Notre doyenne s’en est allée

Christian V. Artin de l’Association pour la Recherche et l’Archivage
de la Mémoire Arménienne (ARAM), nous apprend la triste nouvelle du
décès de la doyenne des Arméniens de France, la très chère Osvanna
Kaloustian, à l’aube de ses 107 ans.

Fille d’un coiffeur-cafetier, née en novembre 1907 à Adabazar, elle
était l’une des dernières rescapées du génocide des Arméniens.

Dans un article du journal Le Monde (janvier 2014), signé Guillaume
Perrier, Frédéric le petit-fils d’Osvanna raconte que ce jour là, en
1915 > On connaît l’infme suite quand des milliers
de nos aîeux seront envoyés vers les déserts de Syrie.

Arrivée en décembre 1928 à Marseille, elle s’y mariera avec Zaven pour
toute une vie. Osvanna nous laisse un recueil de poèmes qu’elle avait
commencé à l’ge de 65 ans.

Dans l’un de ses témoignages, celle qui sera de toutes les
manifestations à Marseille, dira >

La Mission 2015 du CCAF avait souhaité tout mettre en oeuvre pour
qu’en 2015, à l’occasion des cent ans du génocide, une place toute
particulière soit accordée à Ovsanna et que l’Etat français, au plus
haut niveau, puisse honorer cette femme hors du commun.

“Lors des cérémonies de commémoration, le 24 avril 2010 à Paris, elle
avait, aux côtés de Shamiram Sévag, autre survivante du génocide,
redonné force et vigueur à tous les présents et pris date, avec nous
pour être présente en 2015. Le destin en aura décidé autrement, nous
privant de sa présence physique à nos côtés, même si son empreinte,
son exemple et son souvenir seront avec nous, de manière permanente.”

Nos sincères condoléances à sa famille et ses proches.

Qu’elle repose en paix

Voir la video témoignage sur Youtube ICI

samedi 13 septembre 2014,
Jean Eckian (c)armenews.com

Fuller Center for Housing Armenia
96 Sarmen St., 0019 Yerevan, RA
[email protected]
Tel: +374 10 52 47 12
Contact: Alla Asatryan

Philanthropy Has No Borders. Embassies Build with Fuller Center for
Housing Armenia

September 13, 2014, Vanadzor city, Lori region, RA: Today the U.S.
Ambassador to Armenia, Mr. John A. Heffern, the Ambassador of the Republic
of Lithuania to Armenia, Mr. Erikas Petrikas, more than 20 volunteer
members from U.S. Embassy participated in the `’Embassies Build” event
organized by `’Helping Hands” and the Fuller Center for Housing Armenia
aimed to help build homes for eight vulnerable families who have been
living in metal containers (domiks) for more than 26 years.

It was a day of big celebration, a day of unusual excitement in the Taron 3
rd district of Vanadzor city, Lori region. Many volunteers of different
ages and nationalities teamed up to help build the homes of 8 families who
had been living in metal containers almost a quarter of a century.

The participants did the concreting of the floors of the multi-apartment
building making a real difference in the lives of those 8 families. One of
the family’s, the Voskanyans’ home is partially sponsored by Burns Supper
of the Armenian British Business Chamber. The program aimed to assist the
families living in these temporary shelters started in 2008 with the
trilateral partnership between the Armenian Relief and Development
Association Charitable Foundation, Vanadzor Municipality and the Fuller
Center for Housing Armenia. As a result already 47 families live in their
own decent homes, and this year 8 more families will enjoy that happiness.

`’My family and I have been living in a metal container for many hopeless
years. The bad living conditions have affected my son’s, Avetik’s health;
he is ill with hydrocephalus and has had three surgeries. After few years
he should be operated twice again. I couldn’t even dream that one day I
will have my own decent home. Now I see how my dream and the dream of
people like us is coming into true. We are so happy that our children will
live in better conditions… We are grateful to this program and to all these
people who became a helping hand for us in building our dream home,” said
the future resident of the Taron 3rd district, Tatevik Voskanyan, whose
home is partially sponsored by the Burns Supper of the Armenian British
Business Chamber.

`The U.S. Embassy established three years ago as a volunteer community
service organization called Helping Hands. Our Armenian and American
employees and family members have worked with outstanding organizations
such as Fuller on several occasions and look forward to the opportunity to
help the people of Vanadzor,’ said U.S. Ambassador to Armenia John
A.
Heffern.

`’It is everyone’s cherished dream to have a decent home to live in and
especially for these people who have lived in deteriorated metal containers
without any necessities for many years. It is our duty and domain to help
our compatriots,Õ=9BÕ=9B said the president of the Fuller Center for Housing
Armenia, Ashot Yeghiazaryan.

By the end of the year the construction of the multi-apartment building
will be completed and the families will move to their new decent homes.

To remind, the partnership between U.S. Embassy and Fuller Center for
Housing Armenia started in 2008.

Fuller Center for Housing Armenia is a non-governmental, charitable
organization that supports community development in the Republics of
Armenia and Artsakh by assisting in building and renovating simple, decent
and affordable homes, as well as advocating the right to a decent shelter
as a matter of conscience and action. FCHA provides long-term,
interest-free loans to low-income families. The monthly repayments flow
into a Revolving Fund, which is used to help more families, thereby
providing a financial foundation for sustainable community development. Up
to now the Fuller Center for Housing Armenia has assisted 350 families.

For more information, please visit
or email us at
[email protected]

###

MIDDLE EASTERN CHURCH LEADERS HIGHLIGHT CHRISTIANS’ PLIGHT

Voice of America
Sept 11 2014

Jerome Socolovsky

September 11, 2014 7:39 PM

WASHINGTON–

Patriarchs of Eastern Rite churches met with President Barack Obama
on Thursday at the close of a summit that drew attention to attacks
against Christians in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.

For the first time, leaders of major Maronite, Coptic, Armenian
and Melkite denominations came together in Washington for what was
billed as the inaugural summit of In Defense of Christians, a Middle
Eastern group.

The leaders of churches, who have quarreled in the past over theology
and religious practice, made a show of brotherhood to highlight the
dire situation of their flocks. In recent months, Christians and other
minorities have fled Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria after
being told to convert or face death.

Last year, scores of Coptic churches in Egypt were destroyed allegedly
by Muslim brotherhood supporters.

Maronite Patriarch Mar Bechara Boutros Raï said the violence against
Christians is painful enough.

“But, what makes [it] more painful still is the fact that such a
human tragedy has been taking place under the very eyes of the world,
which up to now has been simply watching those atrocities from the
sideline,” he told a packed auditorium at the Capitol.

“What’s happening in the Middle East is a concrete manifestation of
evil,” Armenian Orthodox patriarch Aram I said in an interview. “The
violence, persecution, massacre – these are the different dimensions
and manifestations of evil. Therefore this is not only a Christian
problem. This is a human problem.”

The U.S. Congress is overwhelmingly Christian, and the lawmakers,
who belong to Western churches – Catholic and Protestant, express
increasing alarm about the violence against non-Muslim minorities in
the Middle East.

Congressional representatives lined up to meet the patriarchs and
address the summit. But New Jersey Representative Chris Smith suggested
they shouldn’t get their hopes up.

“I have chaired almost a hundred congressional hearings on religious
freedom,” said Smith, senior member of the House Committee on
Foreign Affairs. “It is not from lack of knowledge. It is from lack
of commitment, that Congress and the president have not stood up
consistently, predictably, to speak out on behalf of the persecuted
Christians in the Middle East.”

A gala dinner for In Defense of Christians Wednesday evening erupted
in discord. Part of the audience booed Texas Senator Ted Cruz for
suggesting that Middle Eastern Christians should see Israel as an ally,
because “those who hate Jews hate Christians.”

But after listening to the speeches from other lawmakers, Syriac
Catholic leader Youssef III Younan was optimistic.

“They all are convinced that the United States has to defend the
rights of those [who are] defenseless,” he said.

Thousands of Younan’s followers have been forced from their homes
in northern Iraq, and he hopes the U.S. will do more to help Kurdish
and Iraqi forces make it safe for them to return.

The patriarchs also led a rare ecumenical service, repeating liturgies
and prayers in English, Aramaic, Coptic and Arabic, to conform to
their differing rites. At the end they embraced and exchanged the
ritual greeting: “Peace be with you.”

CATHOLIC CARDINAL MCCARRICK EMBRACES ISLAM

Daily Caller
Sept 11 2014

Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick offered Islamic religious phrases
and insisted that Islam shares foundational rules with Christianity,
during a Sept. 10 press conference in D.C.

“In the name of God, the Merciful and Compassionate,” McCarrick said
as he introduced himself to the audience at a meeting arranged by
the Muslim Public Affairs Council. That praise of the Islamic deity
is an important phrase in Islam, is found more than 100 times in the
Koran, and is akin to the Catholic prayer, “In the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

McCarrick next claimed that “Catholic social teaching is based on the
dignity of the human person… [and] as you study the holy Koran,
as you study Islam, basically, this is what Muhammad the prophet,
peace be upon him, has been teaching.”

McCarrick was 71 when 19 Muslims brought Islam to the public eye by
murdering 3,000 Americans on 9/11. He is one of the 213 Cardinals of
the Catholic church, but is too old to vote in church debates.

“Either the cardinal has studied the whole thing and does not know what
he’s talking about, or he is making a somewhat misleading statement,”
said Michael Meunier, head of the U.S. Copts Association.

“The practice of the Muslim majority people that adhere to the Koran…

have proven that [claim of equivalence] is not correct,” he told The
Daily Caller during a Sept. 11 trip to Jordan.

“Has Cardinal McCarrick converted to Islam?” asked a scornful critic,
Robert Spencer, the best-selling author of many books on Islam.

“‘Peace be upon him’ is a phrase Muslims utter after they say the
name of [their reputed] prophet… [so] probably he is unaware of the
unintended Islamic confession of faith he has just made,”said Spencer,
who runs the Jihadwatch.org website.

McCarrick is wrong to say “that Islam teaches the dignity of every
human person,” Spencer said. “Actually it teaches a sharp dichotomy
between the Muslims, [who are called] ‘the best of people’ and the
unbelievers [are called] ‘the most vile of created beings,'” Spencer
told TheDC.

“The Koran also says: ‘Muhammad is the apostle of Allah. Those who
follow him are merciful to one another, harsh to the unbelievers,'”
Spencer said.

The same warning came from Archbishop Amel Nona, who was head of
Chaldean Catholic Archeparch of Mosul in Iraq. In a August comment
made to Europeans, he said that “You think all men are equal, but
that is not true: Islam does not say that all men are equal [and]
your values are not their values.”

“If you do not understand this soon enough, you will become the victims
of the [immigrant] enemy you have welcomed in your home,” said Nona,
who is now exiled — along with surviving Chaldean Catholics —
in the Kurdish city of Erbil.

Islamic societies have routinely persecuted non-Muslims, including
Christian Armenians in Turkey and Christian Copts in Egypt, said
Taniel Koushakjian, a spokesman for the Armenian National Committee
of America.

During the First World War, more that 1.5 million Armenians were
deliberately killed by Turkey’s Islamic government, he said.

In Egypt, Copts “seem to bear the brunt of the persecution… [which]
comes from the religious divide [and] is an interpretation of the
theology in which people who are not of the same [Islamic] belief
are cast out as infidels, as unrighteous,” he said.

The Islamic Society of North America says Islam “recognize[s] plurality
in human societies, including religious plurality.” The section of the
Koran that endorses plurality, it is claimed, include verses 10:19,
11:118 and 11.19.

“Mankind was not but one community [united in religion], but [then]
they differed. And if not for a word that preceded from your Lord,
it would have been judged between them [immediately] concerning that
over which they differ,” says verse 10:19, which ISNA says shows
Islam’s tolerance for other religions.

The Koran has some welcoming messages, but they’re from Islam’s early
period, Meunier said. “When Islam became strong and had a strong army,
the tougher verses came down from heaven — apparently — and according
to Islamic teaching, those later verses abrogate the earlier verses
[so] moderate Muslims have an uphill battle saying Islam is tolerant.”

“We have to encourage moderate Muslims to present a more moderate
version of Islam and the Koran,” but they’re outgunned by Saudi clerics
who have used petrodollars to make Islam tougher and less tolerant,
he said.

But the Saudi clerics “won’t do it [because] they don’t believe in it,”
he added.

For Muslims, the Koran is the unimpeachable transcript of commands
from Allah, the single and all-powerful deity. Muslims believe that
the Koran was dictated by an angel to Islam’s final prophet, Mohammad,
1,400 years ago. This rigidity sharply constrains Muslims’ use of
alternative ideas, including elements of Christianity, or secular
ethics and philosophy.

The Koran also include many passage urging the use of violence. “The
penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and
strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be
killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from
opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land,” says Verse 33
of the Koran’s fifth book.

In contrast, the Christian Bible, including the almost-2,000 year-old
New Testament, is based on the statements of witnesses. For example,
Matthew the disciple provide the main account of the Beatitudes sermon,
which includes the famous lines, “Blessed are the merciful, for they
shall be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will
see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the
sons of God.”

The Christians’ reliance on witnesses allowed perpetual debate over the
meaning and purpose of words from the twinned deity of Jesus and God,
and it also allowed a Christian search for evidence of God via the
“natural sciences,” that gradually created modern science.

Christianity also endorsed separate roles for church and state,
where Islam assumes that states’ laws comply with Koranic rules.

McCarrick, however, blended the two distinct religions in his comments
at the press club.

“We are together on this against evil, we are against killing, we are
against destruction… God bless you in this work you do,” McCarrick
said to the Muslim speakers, which included representatives from one
group — the Islamic Society of North America — that was implicated in
a conspiracy to smuggle funds to the Hamas terror group that recently
launched another bombardment of thousands of rockets at Israeli Jews.

“We believe that Islam is a religion which helps people, not kills
them… the Muslim community has always taught this,” McCarrick said.

“I’m privileged to be able to lend my voice to the voice of many
of my friends here,” he said about the Sept. 10 meeting, which was
designed to help U.S.-based Islamic groups avoid the public disgust
with The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Since early this year, the Islamic State group has killed and murdered
thousands of Iraqis that don’t accept rule by the brutal Salafi
variant of Islam. The victims include Shia Muslims, Christians and
adherents of the pre-Christian Yazidi religion. Tens of thousands of
non-Muslims have also been driven from their homes and fields.

McCarrick, however, downplayed ISIS’s attack on Christians in Iraq,
and expressed more concerns for Muslim victims of ISIS attacks. “The
truth of the matter is in these terrible massacres of the Islamic
state, most of the victims have been Muslims, most of them have not
been Christians,” he told his Sept. 10 audience.

“Many Christians, obviously, have suffered, so I am here to say
that we stand with our brothers and sisters in the Muslim community,
who here in the United States have been giving leadership in a very
strong way,” he declared.

“They are proud to be Americans… they love America,” he said,
without retuning to discuss the fate of his fellow Christians under
Muslim rule.

Spencer urged McCarrick to challenge his Muslim hosts. “Cardinal
McCarrick, rather than indulge in this fond and ignorant wishful
thinking, would have done better to have challenged his Muslim friends
to match their lofty words with real action to combat the Islamic
State and other Muslim persecutors of Christians,” Spencer said.

McCarrick should have “asked them to institute programs in mosques and
Islamic schools to teach against the literal meaning of the verses
I quoted above and others like them, so that they no longer incite
Muslims to violence,” in the U.S. or abroad, Spencer said.

TWO LANDMARKS

Al-Ahram, Egypt
Sept 12 2014

Samir Farid reports from Venice

One of the greater aesthetic questions in cinema since its emergence
as an art form is philosophical expression, for how can you express
abstract ideas in an essentially photographic medium? Answers have
been provided by a whole clan of film philosophers from Carl Theodor
Dreyer and Robert Bresson to Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky,
Theodorus Angelopoulos, Terrence Malick — and the Swedish filmmaker
Roy Andersson who, born in Gothenburg in 1943, has directed seven
films since 1970, five of them long features. Andersson made A Swedish
Love Story, which won four major prizes at the Cannes Film Festival
in 1970. Giliap was screened in Cannes’s Directors Fortnight in 1976.

Twenty-four years later, he made Songs from the Second Floor, which
won the jury prize at Cannes in 2000 and was the first part in the
trilogy “Being Human”.

[parts omitted]

Also in the official competition of the Venice Film Festival this year
is the Turkish-German filmmaker Fatih Akin’s The Cut, which though,
in contrast to Andersson’s film, is an epic, is a landmark of equal
lasting value. Akin, who at the age of 30 won at the Golden Bear at
the Berlinale for Head-On (2004), was born in Hamburg in 1973. He
also won the jury prize at the Venice Film Festival for Soul Kitchen
in 2009. For its part The Cut coincides with the 100th anniversary of
the outbreak of the First World War, the 99th of the Armenian Genocide
that remains officially unacknowledged by Turkey, in 1915. Here as
elsewhere Fatih displays the uniqueness of his power as a German who
has nonetheless not lost touch with his Turkish roots, able to embody
the complex relation between east and west, Islam and Christianity,
something that reaches a new peak in The Cut, whose script he wrote
together with the veteran screenwriter Mardik Martin (who wrote several
of Scorsese’s films). The film stars Tahar Rahim as Nazareth Manoogian,
the young Armenian ironsmith named after Jesus’ birthplace.

The Cut is a 20th-century odyssey expressing a positive view of
the essence of Islam as it shows how Nazareth’s life is saved first
by the Turkish Mehmet (Bartu Kucukcaglayan) and then by the Aleppo
soap factory owner Omar Nasreddin, played beautifully by the great
Palestinian actor Makram Khoury. Filmed in colour for cinemascope in
line with its epic brief, the film opens with a map of the countries
that took part in the First World War, before the titles, showing
the alliance between Germany and the Ottoman Empire which fell after
the war and Germany’s defeat. It uses titles indicating the dates
and places of events throughout, spanning war’s end in 1918 and the
declaration of the Turkish republic in 1923, enabling the viewer to
follow the hero’s journey from Mardin in Turkey to Florida, Minneapolis
and North Dakota in the United States, past Aleppo and Beirut.

The beginning and the end are closely linked at the intellectual
level, with the same horrific events in Ottoman Turkey repeated in
America or the New World. Like Jesus, who was a carpenter, Nazareth
works with his hands.

A religious man despite the blow his faith receives when he is
subjected to the horrors of the genocide, he lives with his small
family within a much larger extended family between the house, the
workshop and the church. When the genocide occurs Nazareth is away,
having been forced by the Ottomans to pave a road in the desert. In
the event his wife Rakel (Hindi Zahra) is killed, and so are his
twin daughters Lucinée and Arsinée (Zein and Dina Fakhoury). The
cut of the title is a reference to beheading, to which all those
who participate in paving that road are subjected though Nazareth is
spared by Mehmet with the knife only cutting his vocal chords and so
keeping him silent till the end of the film, regaining his ability
to laugh only when he sees the similarly silent figure of Chaplain
in the film The Kid in Aleppo. Having escaped Nazareth finds out that
the survivors of the genocide are in Ceylanpınar (Syrian Ras Al-Ain),
where he goes looking for his family.

In one of the film’s greatest scenes, the viewer sees the remains of
the tents and the burned up corpses with the injured in the last stages
of death. Nazareth locates his sister in law, who tells him that the
entire family has died and asks him to relieve her of her pain — and,
in the film’s first closeup of her face, Nazareth suffocates her —
with the precision of a great film evident in the choice of angle. Here
as elsewhere, in the fact that the call to prayers is only heard once
when Omar Nasreddin opens his factory in Aleppo to take in Nazareth,
for example, the film is a miracle of precision. At the end of the
war the residents of Aleppo are seen pelting the Turkish soldiers
with stones while they withdraw.

When a child is hit in the eye Nazareth moves away and refuses to take
part. By coincidence he meets his former assistant Levon (Shubham
Saraf), who informs him that his twin daughters are actually still
alive, his wife having handed them over to a Bedouin family.

Thus begins Nazareth’s search for the twins, a picture of whom he
finds in an Armenian church in Beirut, where he finds out they have
been married and moved to Cuba. The father holds onto the picture,
a tribute to photography like that to Chaplain. On arrival in Havana
Nazareth is told the girls have moved to Minneapolis, finally finding
Lucinée in North Dakota. Arsinée, she tells him, has died; and
together they go to her grave. By then the message of the film is
clear: hope must remain so long as the subject is still alive.

Like any epic hero Nazareth comes close to death many times, but he
does not die. This Fatih Akin expresses in a purely cinematic way when
he shows Nazareth, in the imaginary realm, being called by his wife
and then by his daughters as he receives two deadly blows. The film’s
various parts are linked by an Armenian lullaby sung by Rakel, which
was not translated in the screening but remains a powerful reminder
of the beauty of life. The spirit it and the film communicates is
unforgettable.

KAREN YEGHISHYAN NEW HEAD OF SHAHUMYAN REGIONAL ADMINISTRATION IN KARABAKH

STEPANAKERT, September 12. /ARKA/. Vitaly Danielyan has been
relieved of his duties as head of Shahumyan regional administration
of Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR), according to his resignation,
the press office of NKR’s government reported.

Under another decree of the premier, Karen Yeghishyan was appointed
instead. Yeghishyan was prosecutor of Shahumyan region in 2012-2014.

At a government meeting on Thursday NKR’s premier Ara Harutiunyan
expressed gratitude to Vitaly Danielyan for long years of productive
work.–0–