The founder of the company and the director Hovhannes Galstyan summarized the results.
“Aravot” has informed that “Parallels Film” company had to participate in the Cannes Film Market. The founder and the director of “Parallels Film” Hovhannes Galstyan, in a conversation with us, told that on May 15-23 as part of the Cannes Film Market, he has presented his 4 projects at its various stages of production. This year the founder of “Parallels Film” was included in the list of Film Producers invited by French Cinema National Centre (Centre national du cinema et de l’image animée – CNC) and also had a chance to hold individual meetings with guests of key roles in field of European film production.
Hovhannes Galstyan added that Marine Zakaryan’s short film “Pheasant’s Hunter” that recently received a “HAYAK” award for the “Best Debut” nomination and submitted a number of short film festivals, currently is enrolled in the Competition of Short Film at the Moscow International Festival. The world premiere of the film will be held there.
The package of feature film of Marine Zakaryan’s “Crescent Moon Lagoon” (by William Saroyan’s novels) and filmed material was submitted to film production companies in the Cannes involved postproduction. A cooperation agreement was signed with a Spanish company to carry out the film’s sound works in Spain. To receive a financial support (about 17 million Armenian drams is required to complete the project), the film package was introduced to foundations and structures supporting postproduction of digital films. Hovhannes Galstyan says that after lengthy negotiations, they succeeded to obtain screening and distribution rights of William Saroyan’s novels from Pollinger ltd in London.
As for Hovhannes Galstyan’s “Bright Circle”, in the framework of international film project, an agreement of co-production was concluded with French Cosmopolis Film Company. In the coming months the company will introduce the French package of the film to film supporting French and European institutions to provide financial investments for production and postproduction of the French sector of the film. The third partner of the film is a company representing Spain, whose name will be released after the conclusion of co-production agreement. The company will provide the Spanish sector of the film and will ensure postproduction works of the sound. In July, the stage for enrollment of actors will begin, the shooting of the film in Armenia will be in early October. As we reported earlier about “Lost Birds” Armenian-Turkish project, it has now received the support of the Turkish government of about 15% of the film’s budget. The production package received initial support agreement from the National Cinema Center of Armenia. About 30% of the budget is private investments that have already been approved. “This project is of great interest to European producers, but at this stage this interest is discreet and pending. The shooting of the film is planned in 2014 was”, – said Galstyan. He also added that due to the CNC and the Producers Network program it became possible to meet the head of international department of the French National Center of Cinematography Julian Ezanno, the director of the Global Fund projects of Cinematography Vincenzo Bugno, the Venice Biennale director Alberto Barbera, chief Venice Film Market Pascal Diode, Riina Silos representing the structure of European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs, the head of Digital Center of Estonia Martin Aadamsu, director of Business Programs Film Center of Lithuanian programs Kęstutis Drazdauskas. According to the formulation of our interlocutor, besides the progress of “Paralles Film”
projects, they discussed the situation, development constraints and cooperation prospective of independent film production in Armenia.
In our conversation, they also referred to the issues of bringing the films of this year’s Cannes Film Festival winner Abdelatif Kechiche’s “Adel’s Life”, Amati Escalante’s “Eli” to Armenia and inadequate treatment of some artists towards these films. “I still have not seen the films, but definitely watch it at the Moscow Film Festival … I think Cannes does not award prize to random films, even to Spielberg-headed”, – assures the director.
Gohar HAKOBYAN
