Script & Direction: Zara Sargsyan

Actresses: Hasmik Ter-Karapetyan Chater, Arineh Soukiassian

Actor: Marko Jovanetic

Camera: Hakob Karanfilyan

 ” I wrote the script in Canada, it was March of 2007. The script based on a true story that happened to me in a small town called Oakville which is located very close to Toronto. A random meeting with a German woman in Shoes Store cause me lots of thoughts about marriages and divorces, about love and it’s lost. I was wondering what is each one’s role to make one’s family happy.

The story is written from different prospectives. It’s sort of confrontation of two different backgrounds, mentalities and types of a woman.”

” I truly believe one can enjoy reading this story as well as watching the film soon. ” – says author.      

***

— I’m tired… — this was the short answer to the question of why they were separating…

I am a curious person, not in the sense that I like to stick my nose in other people’s business, I simply try to know as much as I possibly can about people’s relationships. I am always a supporter of conversation and because I also have a propensity for listening that woman opened up to me like a book. There was no Anna Karenina’s exaggerated passion in her story. It was more a sorrowful story, about how, in our everyday lives, we lose the most definitive of human sentiments. We waited till the coffee was ready. Each one of us picked up a paper cup, full of four hundred calorie cofee, and began to look for a table. We took a small table near a window.  I love windows, one day when I own a house, it’ll be one with big windows, full of sunlight. 

I’m looking at her, she’s pretty, even now with fifty-six years engraved on her face.

—    This is good coffee, – I say. I don’t mean it, I just say it to start a conversation.

—    Yes, it really is good,– she confirms, its obvious that she’s enjoying her coffee; – I like the strong smell of coffee at Starbucks, I don’t like to drink coffee anywhere else. 

—    Smell isn’t important, for me taste is important։ I like homemade coffee prepared in a jazzve, you can’t find that in Canada.

I thought to myself. «This woman will never understand what jazzve coffee is and why it tastes better. Evidently it wasn’t even worth telling her that in Europe they call that type of coffee Turkish, though it comes from arabic countries. And that I call this coffee exclusively homemade or black coffee and that I get terribly irritated when someone offers me Turkish coffee, because I’m Armenian.» Apparently my silence lasted a long while. She lifted her eyebrow, maybe to get my attention, and began to speak…

 March 2007 Ontario, Canada

http://www.bigfamily.am/eco/index.php?option=com_newsfeeds&view=newsfeed&id=1&Itemid=4

Bem YPAC thanking all of the participants and supporters.

Garegin Grigoryan has quite impressive professional background. He will be working on film with group of young artists from Yerevan State Institute of Theatre & Cinema as well as well known professionals.

Now the project is in the preparation period which is supported by Bem YPAC.

BEM:  YPAC, youth progressive action center, invites young people to participate in trainings on empowerment, mental and physical self defense and gender specifics training.

Empowerment can be interpreted in many ways, these trainings focus on awareness of every aspect of your life. The centre of the life is you, your person, and your awareness. Raising your awareness and empowering yourself are first steps in finding your inner compass in life. Being aware of yourself prepares you for conflicts within yourself and conflicts with your surroundings. Empowering yourself makes you able to withstand the conflict, stand up for yourself and be true to yourself.

“Empowerment training” provided by BEM: YPAC is an eight day training program given on a weekly basis. Various aspects of empowerment are discussed such as:

l        Mental and physical self-defence training, which focuses on both the mental and physical aspect of self-defence

l        Group pressure, which focuses on techniques to recognize and withstand group pressure. 

l        Sexual education, which focuses on education about specific ways to deal in specific situation according to gender.

l        Communication training, which focuses on conflict resolution and learning how to stand up for yourself.

The “Close to Me” training is an initiative of a Dutch NGO called “FALKOR: International Youth Cooperation” and Dutch empowerment trainers of the organization “TRAINERSGROEP WEERBAARHEID”. “Close to me” is a newly developed strategy in the battle to reduce the growing number of HIV/AIDS infections among youth, mixing educational training with various successful mental and physical defence techniques.

Cooperation with the Georgian NGO called “APD” and the Armenian NGO called “BEM” made it possible to start this training, with emphasis on peer-to-peer training, in the Caucasus region.

The extra value of these trainings is that the “Close to Me” strategy is especially developed by Dutch professional trainers together with the volunteers and tailor-made for youth in Georgia and Armenia, focussing on the actual problem of the gap between knowledge and practice among youth.

Contact BEM: YPAC for further information on the “Empowerment training” program by phone: 580-576 e-mail: info@bem.am

This was first photo exhibition of Vako Armeno in Yerevan and it was Bem YPAC’s honor to present his collection ’Canals of Amsterdam’ 

DATE: TWO DAYS ONLY – April 8, 9

LOCATION: The Club

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Born in Lebanon, Vako Armeno graduated from Toros-Roslin Fine Arts Academy in Beirut, Lebanon and later earned his master’s degree in fine arts from the Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts, Armenia.  His paintings have been featured in private and collective exhibitions in Jordan, Cyprus, Greece and Lebanon, among other places.  Additionally, private collectors from Armenia, Greece, Kuwait, UK, Germany, Indonesia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States have also obtained Armeno’s brightly imaginative works. 

Exhibition was meant to become a reason for an environmental discussion, aimed to find out what kind of action will be effective to prevent wood cutting in Teghut forest. As a result a bike tour was initiated and took place last Sunday. See photos in the post called

Save Teghut.   

The activity was initiated by our volunteers as a Civil activity. This is straight act of youth participation in civil society. They would like to help salvation to the most important problems in our society such us helping kids to feel themselves part of the society and to help them to prevent colossal complexes they are having simply from the feeling of being left by parents. 

Director: Zara Nelson Sargsyan

Cast: Hovhannes Babakhanyan, Naira Shahiryan, Mari Msryan

Coordinator: Hasmik Ter-Karapetyan

This is a strange and real story…

A love story via telephone that starts in between a writer and a disabled woman lasts for several weeks and obviously it should come to the end …

Long talks they used to have reaching both hearts… He is becoming addicted to her “stupid talks” as he called it in the very begining. He found her challenging. She is simply trying to have some interesting time flirting with a well known writer to make a bit interesting her lonely and boring life.

“The play that I start not to be bored is becoming dangerous, seems like thinking of him, following him becoming necessity for me…”  she says at some point.

“Seems like I really do miss her silly talks” he says at the same point.

No doubt they will meet in real… and then it will make no difference for him if she is a disable or not because if the soul mate exists he found one…

Film produced by Public TV of Armenia and Bem YPAC.

19 November – 17 December ‘Close to me’ pilot training took place in Bem YPAC office.

We have had 10 volunteers attending the pilot, at the end of training program they evaluated our trainers and program.

This is a project initiated by Bem YPAC and AVC (Armenian Volunteers Corps). It is a Civil Initiative of young people to help people who live in refugee camps to have better living conditions. We have been visiting them on regular basis and we have been cleaning up the trash and small peaces of glass from the yard so kids can play without being endured.

We made a series of team building games for teenagers to make them united.

Started from the next month we will be painting the entrances and the kitchens in the camp.

This isgoing to be an ongoing activity aimed to unite teenagers and involve them into activities

 to improve their living conditions.