paul chaderjian

* 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 hou...

* * Online entertainment magazine logs 4 million hits a month * * By Paul Chaderjian April 7, 2007 Hollyscoop.com is one of the hottest entertainment news sites in the world. With more than 4 million hits a month, Diana Magpapian, Nora Gasparian, and Ani Esmailian bring readers up-to-the-minute entertainment news, inside scoops, video reports, and exclusive photos from the hottest spots in the world of entertainment. The Armenian Reporter's Paul Chaderjian asked the hottest entertainment reporters in Hollywood about their work, their lives, and their dreams. PC: How did you start your site? DM: The site literally started as a joke. Ani Esmailian was in her senior year at Cal State Los Angeles trying to get a job at US Weekly, while Nora Gasparian got a monotonous job straight out of college working for GE, and I was working at Paramount Studios for Entertainment Tonight and The Insider. I would always invite Nora and Ani to Hollywood parties, whe...

* Vahe Berberian's milagros come in words, images, and emotions by Paul Chaderjian Before we enter his second-floor studio, painter, performer, writer Vahe Berberian insists on serving oranges and mandarins from the trees that line the apartment building's driveway. Vahe has been nurturing these trees for more than a decade, and you can tell he's proud of them. He likes green things, he says. Three of the units in the white apartment building - a few miles north of the San Fernando Valley's arterial Ventura Boulevard, in the flats of the Valley - are where Vahe paints, lives, and stores his works of art. Six months out of the year, however, here's not here. The tall and thin 51-year-old, with salt-and-pepper braids, spends a lot of his time taking his performance art and his monologues to Armenian communities as far away as the homeland and Australia. On this Tuesday afternoon, Vahe is in the Southland and plucking oranges off his tree with a lo...

by Paul Chaderjian gor (noun) -- pronunciation: 'gOr, 'gor 1 : grammatically incorrect verb ending in Western Armenian. 2 : innovative musician, charismatic, acoustic Armenian folk star. His name is blunt. Gor. Say it. It's okay. Gor. Say it again. You can, you know. True. Many frustrated Armenian schoolmarms and parents have scolded students to stop tacking a gor at the end of verbs. It may be grammatically incorrect, but it's also the name of the hottest music act since [fill in the name of the last artist whose music you downloaded]. Gor. Say it. Shout his name from rooftops, at church halls, and kebob stands. Text message your friends. IM them with smiley faces. Post his songs on your grandkids' myspace page. Swap music files. Blackberry - or even blueberry or raspberry if you prefer - this breaking news story. Sync up your iPod, because now, “Gor” is a more than an error in Armenian usage. It's the future, the present, a new age an...

by Paul Chaderjian     GLENDALE, Calif. – Like all filmmakers, Gor Kirakosian has to control the choreography inside each frame. At 30 frames per second, the discipline of controlling every detail captured with the lens of a high-definition camera sometimes spills out of the frame and into real life. At one of Glendale’s most popular Armenian hangouts, the all-American Conrad’s diner where we meet for our second interview, Kirakosian tells the aging Vietnamese waitress that he wants a green salad, finely chopped and evenly tossed with ranch dressing. “You really know what you want,” she says, and she’s right; Kirakosian wants to make people laugh. How a salad is tossed to please the palate of a comedy filmmaker may seem like a trivial detail to ponder, but making his first feature, Big Story in a Small City, Kirakosian has had to think about the most hard-to-please audiences by being precise about everything, including directing the waitress during an interview to p...

Poet, musician, artist, Karin Tatoyan sings about her emotions by Paul Chaderjian HOLLYWIERD, Calif. - And a gray-haired Black man walking through the patio of the Coffee Bean with a ghetto blaster on his right shoulder grabs our attention. We all turn to look at the commotion. His stereo is blaring an 80s pop tune from Madonna. The music is so loud, you can't hear yourself think. For a second, on this fifth day of 2007, we all flash back to 1983. “Holiday. Celebrate,” echoes from the cafe; at the corner of Sunset and Vine. “If we took a holiday, took some time to celebrate. Just one day out of life. It would be, it would be so nice.” Karin laughs. It's a sweet laugh. Wise laugh. An insightful one. “How did you find out about me,” she asks me, the interviewee interviewing the interviewer. Oh, excuse me, dear Reporter readers. Let me introduce you to Karin Tatoyan. Singer. Poetess. Musician. Performer. Artist. Armenian. That's why you're reading thi...

Dr. Arnold and Diane Gazarian invest $1.5 million in Fresno State and the new California by Paul Chaderjian ARMENIAN REPORTER FRESNO, CA - Though Native Americans lived here as far back as 6,000 years before Christ, this story begins in the mid-1800s, when a railroad baron established a depot here - setting modern day development into motion. Spanish explorers had deemed the empty, arid desert uninhabitable, and passed through it, as did the Gold Rush-era '49ers. But when a labyrinth of irrigation canals was built on this mostly-flat terrain, the region's Mediterranean climate allowed waves of immigrants to turn the southern San Joaquin Valley into the most agriculturally bountiful area in the world. Now this region, dubbed by the media as the “New California,” is home to a booming population of more than three million people. It is the raisin capital of the world, produces more than 250 crops, and provides a quarter of the food eaten in the U.S. The Souther...