[Nest] artists’ residency and community cluster invites you to a meeting with its fall season residents, filmmakers Emily Mkrtichian and Alex Igidbashian, who will make a presentation on Luys i Luso multimedia project. The meeting will take place on 5 November at 19:00 @ICA Yerevan.
In the summer of 2015, Emily Mkrtichian & Alex Igidbashian followed internationally-renown jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan on a musical pilgrimage through Armenia, Georgia and Turkey to document a series of concerts for his Luys i Luso [www.luysiluso.com] project.
Throughout their residency at [nest] and further on during their collaboration with an audio-visual artist studio in Berlin, they turned the piece into a multi-media installation which had it’s premiere in Gyumri this last week. The filmmakers will talk about Luys i Luso, the context of the project in Armenia, and their own experiences while doing this and other projects in the last few years.
Emily MKRTICHIAN is an American-Armenian filmmaker and writer based in Armenia.
Her films touch on themes of memory and place, and have traveled to film festivals around the world and been broadcast on major European channels.
In 2012, Emily produced the short fiction film, 140 Drams (http://www.140drams.com), in Yerevan, Armenia. The film has been in Film Festivals in over nine countries and won several international awards, including Best International Short at the Izmir International Film Festival and an honoree of the International Cinematographer’s Guild Emerging Cinematographer’s award, for which it screened at Camerimage in November, 2013.
In 2012/2013, Emily directed and produced two documentaries for ARTE (France/Germany). The first was filmed in Karachi, Pakistan about Abdul Sattar Edhi, the country’s greatest humanitarian. The second documentary followed the unique tradition of child police officers in a rural area of India.
In 2014, Emily shot, directed and edited a viral documentary short, Levon: A Wondrous Life [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac-5zNVXYms], about a 60-year-old rollerblading philosopher in Yerevan, Armenia.
This last year, she finished Traversed: A visual journey through Armenia [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0959pZfLRQ] a highly visual, creative documentary about how the past, present, and future are all colliding in Armenia. It is just beginning its film festival run this year.
Currently, she is turning documentary footage from internationally renowned jazz pianist, Tigran Hamasyan’s Luys i Luso project into a multi-media installation.
Alex IGIDBASHIAN is a filmmaker and photographer from Philadelphia, PA.
Before moving to Yerevan, Armenia in 2013, Alex studied Film / Video and Screenwriting at Drexel University and launched a career that includes documentaries, fiction films, music videos and experimental works.
Alex’s work in Armenia includes pieces for television networks such as Armenia’s H1 and Europe’s ARTE, and documentaries films created by Bars Media.
Alex collaborated with Emily on many of these projects, including the recent, Levon: A Wonderous Life.
His most recent film, Haenyeo: Women of the Sea [https://vimeo.com/79749308], a documentary about the women free-divers of Juju Island, South Korea, is currently screening at festivals across the world and has received countless accolades such as the Coastal Culture Award from the San Francisco International Ocean Film Festival and Best Documentary Short from the LA International Underground Film Festival.
In 2015, Alex followed internationally renowned jazz pianist Tigran Hamasyan on his Luys i Luso tour through Armenia, Georgia, and Turkey, filming performances in ancient monasteries. Currently, he is working on turning this footage into a multi-media installation that will travel to cities in Armenia, Europe, and the USA
