Jagadakeer…Between the Near and East by Tina Bastajian (USA, 2001, 19 min., Beta SP)

Synopsis:
"Jagadakeer" is an Armenian term meaning fate, destiny or, literally,"what is written on the forehead." The filmmaker's fate was to find in film, a space in which to explore issues of memory, erasure, nostalgia, absence and reconnection, using the Armenian genocide as point of departure. A collage of stylized tableaus, found footage and home movies, this personal meditation is not just about her grandmother, great-aunts or the Turks; it is about Bastajian herself and her efforts to articulate and transcend the residue of the original trauma into film language.
In English, Armenian, Turkish and Arabic with English Subtitles.

Post-screening panel discussion with Sibel Erol (NYU) and Anahid Kassabian (Fordham University) Program co-presented by the Moon and Stars Project

Biography:
Tina Bastajian is a Los Angeles based film/video artist whose work shapes sound and image to deconstruct narrative forms and elements of the documentary. She uses layered and stylized tableaus with (re)found images often juxtaposed with multiple languages, translation and silence to explore memory, identity, erasure, displacement and desire. Her award winning works include Yellow Aria (1988), Pinched Cheeks and Slurs in a Language that Avoids Her (1995) and Remembering Fatima: A Study on Duration (2000)

Festivals & Awards:
Utopiana Project (Migration des Images) a collaboration with Centre pour l'Image , Contemporaine de Geneve and the Cinemathque Armenienne, Yerevan , 2002
The San Francisco International Film Festival-Certificate of Merit/First Person Documentary, 2001
Women In The Director’s Chair Film Festival, Chicago 2002
The First World Congress of Middle Eastern Studies Film Festival, Mainz, Germany, 2002
Inheritance: Art and Images Beyond a Silenced Genocide, Beacon Street Gallery, Chicago, 2002
Black Maria Film/Video Festival and tour-Juror’s Citation Award, 2002
The Denver International Film Festival 2001
The Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley 2002
The Blinding Light Cinema, Vancouver, 2003
Retrospective of Armenian Cinema at the Beirut International Film Festival, 2001
Havana Biennale, 2003

Reveiws:
A multitude of cultural images and sounds that thread themes of memory, time, and homeland into a beautifully intricate work. -Ariana Proehl-Co-Curator
Women of Color Film Festival-Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley
This elegiac film poem views the Armenian genocide of nearly a century ago
through an intentionally murky lens as an event just out of our reach, poignantly illustrating the impermanence of memory.
-Mark Fox-SF Intl. Film Festival