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Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News
Toronto, Turkey circa 1915
Star Columnist
I take a taxi to the foot of Cherry St. and a gatekeeper ushers me into a street market in Turkey, 1915, busy with Armenian housewives, children, priests and stall-keepers.
Two- and three-storey earth-coloured buildings are only fronts, but built to City of Toronto construction code to ensure they don't fall over in the wind.
Black-robed priests and a bishop mingle with men wearing fezzes, others in ballooning shalvar (old-style Armenian) pants, women, some with scarves around their heads, in brightly coloured, intricately designed dresses, and young boys in checked suits.
Stalls are crammed with a traditional Armenian sweet of walnuts dipped in boiled molasses and strung on threads, dried apricots, dried figs and straw baskets.
This setting is for Atom Egoyan's next movie, Ararat, which takes him and his audience to the horrifying genocide of 1915, when 1.5 million Armenians living in Turkey (then part of the Ottoman Empire) were assassinated by government authorities just because they were Christians.
Ararat (Miramax website), Egoyan explained during a break, is a movie within a movie. It will cost "just over (Cdn.) $15.5 million," said his long-time producer, Robert Lantos, and has Egoyan's most impressive cast yet.
Charles Aznavour plays a present-day Toronto director filming a movie in Turkey about the genocide. (Most of Ararat is actually being filmed in Toronto, with the exception of one week in Drumheller, Alta.) Tying the past with the present is a film set driver, played by University of Toronto student David Alpay, making his screen-acting debut.
In the movie, the driver is returning to Toronto from Turkey with the cans of film the director has used, but is stopped at the airport by a Canada Customs inspector (played by Christopher Plummer) who doubts the driver has what he says on film. The driver tells him the story of the movie and the genocide, with parts of that movie enacted for real and some in the driver's imagination.
Working on the movie helps steady the driver's relationship with his mother (played by Arsinée Khanjian, Egoyan's wife), and there are key roles for Bruce Greenwood and Elias Koteas (Egoyan regulars, as is Khanjian) and Brent Carver.
Toronto's Armenian community couldn't be happier that of all people, writer/director Egoyan is making a movie of this most tragic part of their history. He is one of them. Born in Egypt and reared in Victoria, Egoyan is of Armenian stock.
Many in the community eagerly enlisted as extras and one of them, jeweller Ara Run, voluntarily loaned jewellery for the filming, including an Orthodox cross of 18-karat gold, a 22-karat gold bracelet and others that he watches over, or keeps until needed in a briefcase that never leaves his side.
Ararat, he explains, "is important because that was one of the first genocides of the century and not many people know about it.
"After the genocide, many Armenians moved (from Turkey) to Argentina, Canada and other countries. Children (survivors) didn't talk about it because you never knew who you were talking to. We used to hear about it from our parents who whispered in Armenian, which we didn't understand, but we could get the sense of what they were saying."
Both sets of Run's grandparents were killed in the genocide.
He was at an Armenian community gathering in Toronto that saluted Egoyan a few years ago. So was Lantos, who has produced five of Egoyan's movies in the last 10 years.
At that occasion, Lantos recalled, he publicly suggested Egoyan make a movie about the genocide. (The two had discussed the subject earlier.)
"I tried to (think of making) a historical film, but I wasn't comfortable with that, because that's not the kind of film I make," said Egoyan. Ararat, he explained, "is (also) a contemporary take on what it means to be a filmmaker like this and what it's like to be making a film in Toronto."
On other days, Egoyan has filmed the scenes of 1915 carnage, heads on poles and the like. "They're exhausting to shoot," he said, "because it's so real to you."
Lantos expects Ararat to have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival next year (Egoyan is a favourite of Cannes chiefs), a Canadian premiere at the Toronto film festival and a simultaneous cinema release in Canada and the U.S. that fall.
Ararat has U.S. distribution from the mighty Miramax and has been pre-sold to France, England, Germany, Spain and many other countries and, said Lantos, "I don't think there is any financial risk."
Egoyan hopes the movie will play in Turkey and the government will
admit to the genocide, which it still has not done.
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