Seaching for identity in a multicultural world
* Filmmaker Tamar Salibian goes behind the curtains with Beautiful Armenians
by Paul Chaderjian
Tamar Salibian set out to make a documentary about how 20- and 30-something Armenians dealt with being Armenians in America, how they felt about issues like marrying non-Armenians, and how they connected to their cultural heritage. When the 30-year-old finished her documentary, Beautiful Armenians, she had given birth to a much more personal film.
“It became personal,” she says, “because my connection to the culture is very personal. I'm not involved in the Armenian community, per se. I don't go to events so much, but my connection is through my family and through memory.”
The exploration of her personal connection to her culture took Tamar to Europe, the Middle East, and the homeland. She interviewed her grandmother, cousins, and friends to figure out how those close to her were connected to the culture to which she was connected through them. From 30 hours of footage, she pieced together a 59-minute answer to her questions.
Beautiful Armenians was Tamar's thesis film in graduate school, the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, an hour north of Hollywood. The private institute was funded by the likes of Walt Disney to help students like Tamar explore the visual and performing arts.
“I graduated from Cal Arts in 2004,” she says, “and since then, I've been working in reality TV and independent film postproduction, assisting editors and producers, directors.”
Among her credits are work on Donald Trump's Apprentice reality show, Survivor, and American Inventor. “There is a group of us,” she explains, “who help the editor by organizing the footage. We make very specific and succinct notes on each tape; then editors use our notes to piece together the script and the episodes.”
Tamar is currently working for a small production company called Allentown, which is coproducing a series called Sahara. “It's about these three individuals who are ultra marathon runners,” she says. “They have decided to run across the Sahara Desert. It's a mission to see if they can do it, and it also highlights the current situation in Africa.”
Her personal mission is to exhibit Beautiful Armenians at more film festivals. During the entire month of March, the documentary was screened on local cable in the Boston area. It was also screened at the Golden Apricot Film Festival in Yerevan last summer.
“I didn't go,” she says with a smile. “I was working. I had to pay my bills.” Since then, Tamar's film was also screened at the San Francisco Armenian Film Festival in February. “It was also screened as part of an anthropology series at Eastern Washington University in Spokane,” she says. “It was really great for me, because it will engage people to learn about their family history and to question certain things about their culture.”
Tamar says in examining the essence of her identity, she came to an awareness that she doesn't consider herself only as Armenian. “I consider myself Armenian-American, female, documentarist, living in Los Angeles, from such and such place,” she explains. “We're multifaceted individuals.”
There is not just one answer to the question of how someone is connected to his or her culture, says Tamar. “I found Armenians who don't speak the language,” she says, “but feel very connected to the culture.”
Tamar also interviewed her grandmother, who died last year, to get an oral history of how her grandmother's parents survived the Genocide. Tamar talked to her grandmother on tape about how her family ended up in Jordan, lived in Jerusalem, and left during the Arab-Israeli War in 1948.
“I made a very conscious decision not to show any of the footage that I had shot in Armenia,” she says. “I was going to include it, but I realized this is a Diaspora film, and I am a person from the Diaspora.”
* Diasporan identity
Tamar's Diasporan history began when her parents moved to Iowa to go to graduate school. That's where she was born. The family moved to Los Angeles when she was three. Her mother taught at Ferrahian High School, and Tamar attended Chamlian and Ferrahian until her parents moved to Boston.
“My mom got a job at the Zoryan Institute,” she says. “That was the reason for moving. She is an English professor at Boston University now. My father studied music. He's a composer, and he has his own recording company called Meg Recordings. He's helping me with the promotion and sales of the DVD.”
Tamar received her bachelor's from the Massachusetts College of Art, then moved to New York City to work in publishing and photo sales. “I moved initially to do an internship at Harper's Magazine,” she says. “I thought publishing was a nice mix of photography and writing.”
While working for a photography distribution company in New York, Tamar realized she wasn't doing anything to create her own art, so she applied to graduate school.
“I moved from New York a week before 9-11,” she says. “It was strange not to be with my friends and coworkers [after 9-11].” The film and video program she enrolled in allowed her to design her own curriculum, and she focused on documentary filmmaking and film history.
“I think my best film at Cal Arts was a very short piece was called Home,” she says. “It was the precursor to Beautiful Armenians, a little bit more comedic.” Tamar says she shot the short film during a visit home when her parents were discussing taking a trip to Europe.
“On the one hand it was very funny,” she says, “because my father refused to go anywhere. You know how, Armenians, stubborn Marashtsis. And the wife, trying to understand why this individual won't budge.”
The seven-minute short was a hit at school and around the film-festival circuit, says Tamar. After filming her parents for more than 90 minutes, she pieced together the film that showed the dynamics and her father's eventual agreement to travel to Europe.
Ahead for the budding filmmaker is a second documentary she will call Arabic Lessons. “It's about American individuals who are studying Arabic and why,” she explains. “I want to focus on the West's perception of the Middle East and the Arab world pre- and post-9-11.”
Tamar says she wants to find individuals, as she did in Beautiful Armenians, “who are towing that line between two or three or more cultures.”
by Paul Chaderjian
Tamar Salibian set out to make a documentary about how 20- and 30-something Armenians dealt with being Armenians in America, how they felt about issues like marrying non-Armenians, and how they connected to their cultural heritage. When the 30-year-old finished her documentary, Beautiful Armenians, she had given birth to a much more personal film.
“It became personal,” she says, “because my connection to the culture is very personal. I'm not involved in the Armenian community, per se. I don't go to events so much, but my connection is through my family and through memory.”
The exploration of her personal connection to her culture took Tamar to Europe, the Middle East, and the homeland. She interviewed her grandmother, cousins, and friends to figure out how those close to her were connected to the culture to which she was connected through them. From 30 hours of footage, she pieced together a 59-minute answer to her questions.
Beautiful Armenians was Tamar's thesis film in graduate school, the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, an hour north of Hollywood. The private institute was funded by the likes of Walt Disney to help students like Tamar explore the visual and performing arts.
“I graduated from Cal Arts in 2004,” she says, “and since then, I've been working in reality TV and independent film postproduction, assisting editors and producers, directors.”
Among her credits are work on Donald Trump's Apprentice reality show, Survivor, and American Inventor. “There is a group of us,” she explains, “who help the editor by organizing the footage. We make very specific and succinct notes on each tape; then editors use our notes to piece together the script and the episodes.”
Tamar is currently working for a small production company called Allentown, which is coproducing a series called Sahara. “It's about these three individuals who are ultra marathon runners,” she says. “They have decided to run across the Sahara Desert. It's a mission to see if they can do it, and it also highlights the current situation in Africa.”
Her personal mission is to exhibit Beautiful Armenians at more film festivals. During the entire month of March, the documentary was screened on local cable in the Boston area. It was also screened at the Golden Apricot Film Festival in Yerevan last summer.
“I didn't go,” she says with a smile. “I was working. I had to pay my bills.” Since then, Tamar's film was also screened at the San Francisco Armenian Film Festival in February. “It was also screened as part of an anthropology series at Eastern Washington University in Spokane,” she says. “It was really great for me, because it will engage people to learn about their family history and to question certain things about their culture.”
Tamar says in examining the essence of her identity, she came to an awareness that she doesn't consider herself only as Armenian. “I consider myself Armenian-American, female, documentarist, living in Los Angeles, from such and such place,” she explains. “We're multifaceted individuals.”
There is not just one answer to the question of how someone is connected to his or her culture, says Tamar. “I found Armenians who don't speak the language,” she says, “but feel very connected to the culture.”
Tamar also interviewed her grandmother, who died last year, to get an oral history of how her grandmother's parents survived the Genocide. Tamar talked to her grandmother on tape about how her family ended up in Jordan, lived in Jerusalem, and left during the Arab-Israeli War in 1948.
“I made a very conscious decision not to show any of the footage that I had shot in Armenia,” she says. “I was going to include it, but I realized this is a Diaspora film, and I am a person from the Diaspora.”
* Diasporan identity
Tamar's Diasporan history began when her parents moved to Iowa to go to graduate school. That's where she was born. The family moved to Los Angeles when she was three. Her mother taught at Ferrahian High School, and Tamar attended Chamlian and Ferrahian until her parents moved to Boston.
“My mom got a job at the Zoryan Institute,” she says. “That was the reason for moving. She is an English professor at Boston University now. My father studied music. He's a composer, and he has his own recording company called Meg Recordings. He's helping me with the promotion and sales of the DVD.”
Tamar received her bachelor's from the Massachusetts College of Art, then moved to New York City to work in publishing and photo sales. “I moved initially to do an internship at Harper's Magazine,” she says. “I thought publishing was a nice mix of photography and writing.”
While working for a photography distribution company in New York, Tamar realized she wasn't doing anything to create her own art, so she applied to graduate school.
“I moved from New York a week before 9-11,” she says. “It was strange not to be with my friends and coworkers [after 9-11].” The film and video program she enrolled in allowed her to design her own curriculum, and she focused on documentary filmmaking and film history.
“I think my best film at Cal Arts was a very short piece was called Home,” she says. “It was the precursor to Beautiful Armenians, a little bit more comedic.” Tamar says she shot the short film during a visit home when her parents were discussing taking a trip to Europe.
“On the one hand it was very funny,” she says, “because my father refused to go anywhere. You know how, Armenians, stubborn Marashtsis. And the wife, trying to understand why this individual won't budge.”
The seven-minute short was a hit at school and around the film-festival circuit, says Tamar. After filming her parents for more than 90 minutes, she pieced together the film that showed the dynamics and her father's eventual agreement to travel to Europe.
Ahead for the budding filmmaker is a second documentary she will call Arabic Lessons. “It's about American individuals who are studying Arabic and why,” she explains. “I want to focus on the West's perception of the Middle East and the Arab world pre- and post-9-11.”
Tamar says she wants to find individuals, as she did in Beautiful Armenians, “who are towing that line between two or three or more cultures.”
