EGOYAN RECOGNIZED FOR ARMENIAN PERSPECTIVE IN ARARAT
Martin Knelman
Toronto Star
Feb 28 2008
Canada
Atom Egoyan has won Genies and prizes at Cannes, and has gone to
the Oscars as a double nominee, but on May 19 he will be in Israel
receiving an award that takes him into another realm and recognizes
him as one of the great humanitarians of the cultural world.
The multi-talented Toronto director will be in the heady company of
playwright Tom Stoppard and novelist Amos Oz, who will share the $1
million (U.S.) Dan David Prize for "creative rendering of the past"
in literature, theatre or film.
In particular, the award to Egoyan is in recognition of his
controversial 2002 near-epic Ararat, which concerned the 1915 Armenian
genocide in Turkey and the attempt to deny it ever happened.
"One of the great things about it is that I get to meet two of my
idols," Egoyan said yesterday when I caught up with him at the Regent
Theatre, where he is editing his next movie, Adoration, which could
have its world premiere at Cannes in May the same week Egoyan is
honoured in Tel Aviv. The film, shot in Toronto, concerns a teenager
who poses on the Internet as the son of a terrorist.
"When I made Ararat, something in my career shifted," Egoyan recalls,
casually attired in black pants and T-shirt. He was greatly influenced
by Arsinee Khanjian, his partner both personally and professionally,
who had always felt a strong link with Armenian history. And he was
prodded by producer Robert Lantos, who not only pressed him to tell
this story but came up with a big budget to make it possible.
"This is a great honour," Lantos said yesterday, "and it is also a
powerful illustration of the way Israel and the Jewish people embrace
the plight of others who are persecuted."
Egoyan says he made Ararat when he realized he had reached a point
when he needed to become a spokesperson. "The film was an expression
of something I wanted to say," he explains, "and it became an object
that was viciously attacked."
Protesters threatened to disrupt the world premiere of the film at
Roy Thomson Hall on opening night of the Toronto International Film
Festival.
And in Turkey – where artists and writers are still hounded if they
dispute official claims that there was never a genocide – Ararat
was withdrawn by its distributor after threats that cinemas would be
blown up.
With characteristic understatement, Egoyan allows that he has had
movies that were better received than Ararat. "Some people felt it
was too strident," he says, "but there were others who complained it
wasn’t strident enough.
"Despite all that, this is the film of mine that will survive after
others have been forgotten," he predicts.
What he may not have realized at the time he made the film was that
it would not be over when the final credits rolled, that it would
shape his life for years to come.
Case in point: Egoyan has become a continuing voice for the rights of
oppressed people, whether or not they happen to be Armenian. That’s
why he will be the guest speaker tonight when the compelling Human
Rights Watch Film Festival opens at the Isabel Bader Theatre with a
screening of the eye-opening Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame, which
presents Taliban oppression of Afghan civilians from the fresh
perspective of children, especially a girl determined to attend school.
It was officials of the University of Toronto – where Egoyan has become
a distinguished visiting lecturer for three years – who submitted
his name for the Dan David Prize. And Egoyan is giving 10 per cent
of the prize money to set up a U of T scholarship.
According to the prize citation, Egoyan is being honoured "for his
superb modernist filmmaking, which explores Armenian history and
culture and the human impact of a historical event while examining
the nature of truth and its representation through art."
Play it again, Atom.