Ազգային ինքնութեան խնդիրն Ատոմ Էգոյեանի ֆիլմերում
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2013
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The famous Canadian-Armenian director Atom Egoyan is one of the most original and distinctive filmmakers. The issues of national and cultural identity are prominent in most of his films. Almost all his movies narrate stories of people in search of their true identities and, accordingly, their own niche in the world. Identity and identification constitute the central idea of Egoyan's legacy. The problem is most extensively emphasized in two of his movies: Calendar (1993) and Ararat 2002). These are two rare films that portray the troubled state of mind of the Armenian Diaspora.
In an anthological, ethical, historical and national-spiritual mysterious context the characters of these two movies try to understand who an Armenian is, and where his identity may be found.
In Calendar Egoyan examined the problem of losing national identity. What is national identity and why are some able to identify themselves with their motherland from birth, while others (much like the photographer in the movie, played by Egoyan himself) are indifferent and somehow despise it?
(In one of his interviews Egoyan noted that Calendar was his most personal film and that while making it he was guided by his own experiences and dilemmas, which touched him when he first arrived in Armenia in the early 90s. He said, "the photographer character was my worst nightmare of what I could become".)
The transition from Calendar to Ararat was quite natural and even inevitable, for if in the first film Egoyan presented the phenomenon of national identity in general, in the second he discussed the Armenian Diaspora identity problem with reference to the Armenian Genocide.
Both Henri Verneuil's Mayrig and Ararat are not about the Genocide itself. Nonetheless, unlike Mayrig, which is about the Armenians who suffered the Genocide themselves and took refuge in other countries, moaning and missing their lost motherland, Ararat portrays the generation that has never seen this motherland and has only a vague and in some cases mythical notion about it. Thus, the memories of the massacres of 1915, passed on to them by their forefathers, become the only way for them to identify themselves with their historical motherland.
As a true artist, Egoyan shares his thoughts and feelings through troubling questions, which tickle the minds and souls of everyone interested in his national identity.
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Վարդիկեան, Ա., «Ազգային ինքնութեան խնդիրն Ատոմ Էգոյեանի ֆիլմերում», «Հայկազեան հայագիտական հանդէս», 2013, Պէյրութ, էջ 265-290