Arpa Film Festival in Hollywood

A Film Festival Not to be Missed

Halloween, pumpkin patches, and fallen leaves are images that come to mind when I think of autumn. The assortment of festivals are events associated with that time of the year. Among all Fall Festivals – from October Fest to Harvest Fest – there is one that I don't want to miss: that’s the Arpa International Film Festival.

Yes, I'm a diehard fan of that Festival.  Over the course of many years I've followed Arpa Foundation for Film, Music and Art events. Through watching many documentaries at its festival I've gained insight into the dynamic of global issues.

This proved true again last week, when the Arpa International Film Festival opened its doors on Thursday evening (September 26) to its faithful audience at the Egyptian Theatre in the heart of Hollywood.

At the festival, each year I try to watch as many films as possible. There are always at least one or two films that stand out. This year the opening night kicked off with "Lady Urmia," a 30-minute environmental documentary by Mohammad Ehsani, an Iranian filmmaker, about a dying lake in Iran called Urmia.

The subject of the documentary was close to my heart, because my mother grew up in Tabriz where the lake is. Like every Persian work I encounter, its artistic rendition accents the message. The film is narrated in poetic words by the lake itself. The lake tells us about its glorious past. Today, Urmia, the third world's largest salt-water lake, has lost 70% of its waters and is dying.

I went to Urmia once for a family vacation, fifty years ago. At that time, we enjoyed its beauty and swam in its salty waters. You could float in the water even if you didn't know how to swim. But God forbid if a drop of water touched your eyes!

The film shows boats, now abandoned and rusted, that we rode to travel from one end of the lake to the other. The trip took a whole day because the boats moved quite slowly. My two grandmothers were with us. We made them comfortable by giving them the seats on covered inside benches, while we rode outside under the scorching sun. Today, there are no more boat trips, and the water is too salty for swimmers.

Another notable documentary at the festival was "Heal America" by Yervand Kochar. It features advocate Ted Hayes, a black guy, who has dedicated his life to increasing sympathy and support for homeless people, and to making their voices heard. In 1985, Hayes left the comfort of his home and joined the homeless population in Los Angeles.  The film portrays his plucky and eccentric character, and shows him dressed in his signature white clothing and the flowing white robe. The audience pursues the discussion of Hayes and Alec, an Armenian cynical writer.  We learn Ted’s views of life through the dialog between him and Alec.

After the screening of the film, I had the chance to talk to Hayes.  He said that God and Scriptures motivated him to address the abject poverty of the homeless population. He said, "I may have a controversial personality, but what I say is the simple truth. We are connected to the pain of everyone in the world."  The self-proclaimed American "Gandhi" has high hopes that he will heal America from the wounds of slavery.

The film festival ended with a documentary about orphans of the Armenian Genocide.  It was an emotional visual portrayal of the subsequent lives of orphans who lost their parents during the death marches.  The children were housed in schools and orphanages of countries bordering Turkey. The never-seen pictures of orphanages put me in awe.

All in all, this year's full schedule of films once again encompassed the festival's core mission, which is cultural understanding and global empathy.  Kudos to Sylvia Minassian for having a vision to hold a festival where emerging filmmakers can screen their creative expressions. The Arpa International Film Festival audience is lucky to enjoy and learn from a variety of new works.

I cannot finish my review of the festival without mentioning the wonderful hospitality we received every night – a spread of delicious food. I'm already looking forward to next year!

Government Shutdown – The Reign of Morons

Someone had to say it!  Charles Pierce puts the Republican idiocy in perspective, using some epithets that may add words to your vocabulary.  

URL: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Shutdown_Blues

The Reign Of Morons Is Here

By Charles P. Pierce

October 1, 2013

Only the truly naive can be truly surprised.

Only the truly child-like can have expected anything else.

In the year of our Lord 2010, the voters of the United States elected the worst Congress in the history of the Republic. There have been Congresses more dilatory. There have been Congresses more irresponsible, though not many of them. There have been lazier Congresses, more vicious Congresses, and Congresses less capable of seeing forests for trees. But there has never been in a single Congress -- or, more precisely, in a single House of the Congress -- a more lethal combination of political ambition, political stupidity, and political vainglory than exists in this one, which has arranged to shut down the federal government because it disapproves of a law passed by a previous Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court, a law that does nothing more than extend the possibility of health insurance to the millions of Americans who do not presently have it, a law based on a proposal from a conservative think-tank and taken out on the test track in Massachusetts by a Republican governor who also happens to have been the party's 2012 nominee for president of the United States. That is why the government of the United States is, in large measure, closed this morning.

We have elected the people sitting on hold, waiting for their moment on an evening drive-time radio talk show.

We have elected an ungovernable collection of snake-handlers, Bible-bangers, ignorami, bagmen and outright frauds, a collection so ungovernable that it insists the nation be ungovernable, too. We have elected people to govern us who do not believe in government.

We have elected a national legislature in which Louie Gohmert and Michele Bachmann have more power than does the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who has been made a piteous spectacle in the eyes of the country and doesn't seem to mind that at all. We have elected a national legislature in which the true power resides in a cabal of vandals, a nihilistic brigade that believes that its opposition to a bill directing millions of new customers to the nation's insurance companies is the equivalent of standing up the the Nazis in 1938, to the bravery of the passengers on Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, and to Mel Gibson's account of the Scottish Wars of Independence in the 13th Century. We have elected a national legislature that looks into the mirror and sees itself already cast in marble.

We did this. We looked at our great legacy of self-government and we handed ourselves over to the reign of morons.

This is what they came to Washington to do -- to break the government of the United States. It doesn't matter any more whether they're doing it out of pure crackpot ideology, or at the behest of the various sugar daddies that back their campaigns, or at the instigation of their party's mouthbreathing base. It may be any one of those reasons. It may be all of them. The government of the United States, in the first three words of its founding charter, belongs to all of us, and these people have broken it deliberately. The true hell of it, though, is that you could see this coming down through the years, all the way from Ronald Reagan's First Inaugural Address in which government "was" the problem, through Bill Clinton's ameliorative nonsense about the era of big government being "over," through the attempts to make a charlatan like Newt Gingrich into a scholar and an ambitious hack like Paul Ryan into a budget genius, and through all the endless attempts to find "common ground" and a "Third Way." Ultimately, as we all wrapped ourselves in good intentions, a prion disease was eating away at the country's higher functions. One of the ways you can acquire a prion disease is to eat right out of its skull the brains of an infected monkey. We are now seeing the country reeling and jabbering from the effects of the prion disease, but it was during the time of Reagan that the country ate the monkey brains.

History repeats: The Republicans are saying the same thing Marie Antoinette said, "Let them eat cake."

This is a column by Jack Neworth.  He's comparing today's politicians to Marie Antoinette, when she said: "Let them eat cake." Now the Republicans want shamelessly pass a bill to cut the food-stamp program. it's a very well thought out column.  

I’ve tried to stay clear of politics lately to avoid running the risk of receiving a reader e-mail that begins with, “Dear Idiot.” But, to quote Al Pacino from “Godfather III,” “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

Last week, while I was blithely writing about pizza, House Republicans were blithely passing a bill cutting food stamps by $40 billion and kicking 3.8 million people out of the program by 2014. “Why of course,” I muttered to myself, “socking it to the poor is the solution. How else can we pay for all our wars, like Iraq?”

The cuts are supposed to save $40 billion over 10 years. Meanwhile, in Iraq, the Bush administration admitted losing $17 billion in a few weeks. Just lost. Gone. Disappeared. And they weren’t even ashamed. Imagine how many kids in America who go to bed hungry at night that $17 billion could have fed. Shameful.

Keep in mind, every time a bridge in the U.S. collapses (which is almost daily) we’re completely rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure. Only in America. (Actually, only in Iraq.)

Currently, income inequality in America has never been greater. The middle class is essentially disappearing and the top 1 percent own 40 percent of the country’s wealth. Mystifying as it might seem, the answer for many is to cut benefits to the poor in a bizarre “reverse Robin Hood.”

Among those in favor of these cuts are folks who call themselves Christians. It’s ironic because one of the themes Jesus stressed over and over was helping the poor. I’m reminded of the Woody Allen joke, “If Jesus ever returned to Earth and saw what was being done in his name he’d never stop throwing up.”

As I sit back and watch this attack on the poor, I recall someone in history who was famous for her cavalier attitude toward the hungry — Marie Antoinette. For those unfamiliar, Marie was queen of France from 1770 to 1792. (Before that she had a series of odd jobs like duchess and dauphine, etc.) While at first she was admired by the populous for her charm and beauty, she soon became hated because of her lavish spending during times of famine.

Actually, it was worse. France was badly in debt because of the Seven Years’ War. (What will history call our conflict in Afghanistan, the “13 Years War?”) When told the poor were rioting because they had no bread to eat, Marie was reported to have said casually, “Let them eat cake.” For some reason this didn’t go over very well with the masses.

In retrospect, it’s safe to say that, given a chance, Marie might have chosen her words a little more carefully as she helped cause the French Revolution. Hubby Louis XVI was deposed and the monarchy was abolished entirely on Sept. 21, 1792. And, eight months after her husband’s execution, Marie was tried, convicted and, on Oct. 16, 1793, was executed by guillotine. (Giving rise to the expression, “Don’t stick your neck out.”)

But Marie packed a lot of laughs into her 37 years. She was married at 14, played the harpsichord, spinet, clavichord and harp, sang French songs and Italian arias and was an accomplished dancer. (If she were around today she’d be ideal for “Dancing with the Stars” or “Real Housewives Without Heads.”)

So maybe Marie was rather careless with her words, what with the infamous “let them eat cake” crack. But maybe not. Many historians speculate that the quote might have originated with angry French peasants and spread throughout the realm via the TMZ of that era. (Imagine Harvey Levin in the late 18th century. No thanks.)

Given Marie’s lack of “simpatico” with the masses, here are some tips she might offer today’s poor about the challenge of getting along without food:

• Call it “fasting.” (So much nicer than “starving.”)

• Think of “minuscule portions” as the latest diet craze.

• Share a lentil with a friend.

• Less food, less dishes to clean.

• Think of “dumpster diving” as exercise. We could call it, “pilates for the poor.”

• No embarrassing moments with food stamps at the checkout stand.

• Skinny people live longer.

• Forget lugging groceries from the car. (Assuming you have a car.)

• Enjoy all the extra hours you’ll have without meal time.

• And feel good; you’re not losing a dinner, you’re paying for a foreign war.

To see Al Pacino’s rant in “Godfather III,” go to YouTube and type, “Just when I thought I was out.” He practically eats the scenery, which, now that I think of it, might be the Tea Party’s advice to the poor.

- See more at: http://smdp.com/laughing-matters-marie-antoinettes-top-10-tips/127422#sthash.oIIzGngq.dpuf

A Great Humanitarian Story from WWII - LEICA FREEDOM TRAIN

Great humanitarian story from WW II  -   -

LEICA CAMERA STORY 

The Leica is the pioneer 35mm camera. It is a German product - precise, minimalist, and utterly efficient.

Behind its worldwide acceptance as a creative tool was a family-owned, socially oriented firm that, during the Nazi era, acted with uncommon grace, generosity and modesty. E. Leitz Inc., designer and manufacturer of Germany's most famous photographic product, saved its Jews.

And Ernst Leitz II, the steely-eyed Protestant patriarch who headed the closely held firm as the Holocaust loomed across Europe, acted in such a way as to earn the title, "the photography industry's Schindler."

As soon as Adolf Hitler was named chancellor of Germany in 1933, Ernst Leitz II began receiving frantic calls from Jewish associates, asking for his help in getting them and their families out of the country. As Christians, Leitz and his family were immune to Nazi Germany's Nuremberg laws, which restricted the movement of Jews and limited their professional activities.

To help his Jewish workers and colleagues, Leitz quietly established what has become known among historians of the Holocaust as "the Leica Freedom Train," a covert means of allowing Jews to leave Germany in the guise of Leitz employees being assigned overseas.

Employees, retailers, family members, even friends of family members were "assigned" to Leitz sales offices in France, Britain, Hong Kong and the United States, Leitz's activities intensified after the Kristallnacht of November 1938, during which synagogues and Jewish shops were burned across Germany ..

Before long, German "employees" were disembarking from the ocean liner Bremen at a New York pier and making their way to the Manhattan office of Leitz Inc., where executives quickly found them jobs in the photographic industry.

Each new arrival had around his or her neck the symbol of freedom - a new Leica camera.

The refugees were paid a stipend until they could find work. Out of this migration came designers, repair technicians, salespeople, marketers and writers for the photographic press.

Keeping the story quiet The "Leica Freedom Train" was at its height in 1938 and early 1939, delivering groups of refugees to New York every few weeks. Then, with the invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Germany closed its borders.

By that time, hundreds of endangered Jews had escaped to America, thanks to the Leitz’s efforts. How did Ernst Leitz II and his staff get away with it?

Leitz, Inc. was an internationally recognized brand that reflected credit on the newly resurgent Reich. The company produced cameras, range-finders and other optical systems for the German military. Also, the Nazi government desperately needed hard currency from abroad, and Leitz's single biggest market for optical goods was the United States.

Even so, members of the Leitz family and firm suffered for their good works. A top executive, Alfred Turk, was jailed for working to help Jews and freed only after the payment of a large bribe.

Leitz's daughter, Elsie Kuhn-Leitz, was imprisoned by the Gestapo after she was caught at the border, helping Jewish women cross into Switzerland. She eventually was freed but endured rough treatment in the course of questioning. She also fell under suspicion when she attempted to improve the living conditions of 700 to 800 Ukrainian slave labourers, all of them women, who had been assigned to work in the plant during the 1940’s.

(After the war, Kuhn-Leitz received numerous honors for her humanitarian efforts, among them the Officier d'honneur Des Palms Academic from France in 1965 and the Aristide Briand Medal from the European Academy in the 1970’s.)

Why has no one told this story until now? According to the late Norman Lipton, a freelance writer and editor, the Leitz family wanted no publicity for its heroic efforts. Only after the last member of the Leitz family was dead did the "Leica Freedom Train" finally come to light.

It is now the subject of a book, "The Greatest Invention of the Leitz Family: The Leica Freedom Train," by Frank Dabba Smith, a California-born Rabbi currently living in England.

 WWII

Memories of the righteous should live on.

A Stroll in Yerevan on Independence Day... Last Year

Saturday September 21, is Armenian Independence Day, which I’d say holds a special place in the hearts of all Armenians. It certainly does for me. The day signifies an important milestone, the realization of a dream held for generations that suddenly and unexpectedly happened 22 years ago after the fall of Soviet Union.

This year I’m going to celebrate Armenian Independence Day here in Glendale, but last year I had the great opportunity to be in the beautiful city of Yerevan. It was a crisp Friday morning, around 77F.  What I had always heard is definitely true: the best time to visit Yerevan is at the end of September.  Indeed, it was so enjoyable to walk along the wide sidewalks. The city absolutely sparkled with newly refurbished sidewalks and streets. Everything looked so fresh.

I had guests who were visiting Armenia. It was a perfect day to stroll along the streets of Yerevan and show them all the sites. The mature sycamore trees lining the main streets were shining in the sunlight and everything looked so clean and effervescent. The tricolor flags had been hoisted all over the city and along the streets just a few days earlier. The sight of them made my blood boil. 

We started from Freedom Square, where the Opera is.  We took a few pictures of the tricolor flags set in the center of the square and waving gracefully in the wind. Then we proceeded to the Opera, where I wanted to check at the box office about upcoming cultural events.

From the Opera, we passed by a few cafés and then came to Swan’s Lake. We took photos of the lake and the swans swimming there. Then we took a few more photos of the abstract statue of Arno Babajanian playing piano.  I was full of pride – as if I owned the city.

From Swan Lake, we made our way through the newly-constructed pedestrian Northern Avenue to Republic Square where last-minute preparations were underway for the evening celebration. A light show and a concert were expected to bring thousands to the square.

Walking along Northern Avenue, we encountered a full throttle of Independence Day spirit.  There we met groups of young people, marching with flags wrapped around their shoulders or hoisted in their hands.  They were chanting upbeat patriotic slogans, and the sound carried across the street.

It was so heartwarming to see those kids, our next generation of leaders, keeping the spirit of the Day alive. I had imagined they had no idea how dear Independence Day was to us. For centuries, under different rulers, we had strived to regain our independence, and now we have it.

Most people were wearing either tricolor or orange shirts. Young women were wearing fashionable tricolor headbands. Most carried small flags in their hands. It seemed everyone in the city had come outside for the celebration.  I met some friends that had travelled long distances to be there for the occasion.

We sat at a café to have a bite. My eyes traveled to all corners of the street, soaking in the spirit of the day. Young artists were painting tricolor tattoos on young peoples’ arms or faces.  The charge was 200 dram (50 cents).  I regretted that I didn’t purchase one.

More than not having a tattoo, I regretted that we had missed standing outside on Northern Avenue during early morning hours when the state philharmonic orchestra and state academic choir had put together a “flash-mob” concert. But, thanks to YouTube, we can still have the pleasure of listening to it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOeiDGcEPwE

That’s how the laid-back city of Yerevan, last year, celebrated Independence Day.

Inside of the Kowloon Walled City – the most densely populated place on earth. A phenomenal way of living.

Once thought to be the most densely populated place on Earth, with 50,000 people crammed into only a few blocks, these fascinating pictures give a rare insight into the lives of those who lived Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong.

Taken by Canadian photographer Greg Girard in collaboration with Ian Lamboth the pair spent five years familiarising themselves with the notorious Chinese city before it was demolished in 1992.

The city was a phenomenon with 33,000 families and businesses living in more than 300 interconnected high-rise buildings, all constructed without contributions from a single architect.

By the early 1980s it was notorious for brothels, casinos, cocaine parlours and opium dens. It was also famous for food courts which would serve up dog meat and had a number of unscrupulous dentists who could escape prosecution if anything went wrong with their patients.  

The city eventually became the focus of a diplomatic crisis with both Britain and China refusing to take responsibility. 

Despite it being a hotbed of crime many of its inhabitants went about their lives in relative peace with children playing on the rooftops and those living in the upper levels seeking refuge high above the city.

The rooftops were the one place they could breathe fresh air and escape the claustrophobia of their windowless flats below.

Eventually, over time both the British and Chinese authorities found the city to be increasingly intolerable, despite lower crime rates in later years.

The quality of life and sanitary conditions were far behind the rest of Hong Kong and eventually plans were made to demolish the buildings.

Many of the residents protested and said they were happy living in the squalid conditions but the government spent $2.7billion Hong Kong dollars in compensation and evacuations started in 1991. They were completed in 1992.

Read more and watch more pictures

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2139914/A-rare-insight-Kowloon-Walled-City.html

 History on Youtube:  http://youtu.be/Lby9P3ms11w"

The Tragedy of Armenia Repatriation in 1947– Armenians were uprooted from all over the world to a destitute Soviet Republic –

“Project in Progression: Deception and the Post-WWII Soviet Armenia Repatriation”

 

By Hazel Antaramian Hofman

August 2013

Presently Hazel Antaramian Hofman is working on her project to publish a book about Armenian Repatriation to Armenia after World War II. The following is in her words.

 

I was born in 1960, in Yerevan, Armenia, yet spoke little Armenian, and what I did speak was Western Armenian.  As a young child, I always wondered why I came from such an exotic place when my father was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and my mother was from Lyon, France.  Only after years of hearing stories did I realize that I was the product of two Armenian Diaspora post-World War II repatriate children, who were compelled by their father and mother’s emotive sense of hayrenik to leave one known cultural and ideological ground for another. 

 

The post-WWII repatriation movements uprooted many Armenians from all over the world:  France, Lebanon, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Syria,Bulgaria, Romania, Palestine, the United States, even some from Sudan, Iran, Iraq, India, Uruguay, Argentina, and China.  It was an orchestrated campaign to repopulate what fraction that remained of a vast land well-documented as the ancestral home of Armenians from the time of Darius the Great.  But the repatriates were headed not to the romanticized, vast ancient land of their forebears, but to a “sovietized” Armenia under Stalin.  It was a migratory event complete with personal and spiritual dispossession, and cultural disparity. 

 

The Republic of Armenia was in a state of extreme poverty after World War II.  By November of 1945, Stalin authorized the return of Armenians to Soviet Armenia with the incentive of bringing in new life in the construction, vitalization, and economic development to a destitute Soviet Republic.  Armenian nationalistic organizations, political parties, and religious leadership organized efforts of the repatriation.  The Armenian Repatriation Committee stressed the need to nationally support the country of Armenia while downplaying the reality that Armenia was now a Soviet-dominated country.

 

Nearly a year ago my article, “From James Dean to Stalin: the Tragedy of the Armenian Repatriation,” appeared online in Osservatorio balcani e caucaso, in English and Italian.  While this was not the original title of my work, the main photograph that accompanied the article showed three young Armenian-American men whose appearances had a distinct “Hollywood” style.  The three, who were between 17 and 20 years old, were sailing on the Rossiya and heading toward Stalin’s Soviet Armenia.  The irony of the scene did not escape the editor of the publication who decided to re-title my article.  The new title gave the true flavor of the times that laid ahead for the three Armenian-Americans, along with another 309, who sailed from New York to Armenia in the late 1940s as part of a major international repatriation effort organized by various sectors of the Armenian diaspora in cooperation with the Soviet government. 

 

As the original article indicates, I remain open to hearing the stories and looking at the photographs of repatriates from this time in Soviet Armenian history.  I can be reached by electronic mail or through my website at www.hazelantaramhof.com.