Aik Karapetyan: “I really wanted to make a show about how people come to terms with their unfulfilled dreams.”
Photo: Karina Miezāja
Diāna Jance, “Kultūrzīme”, JSC “Latvijas Mediji”
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Next week, the Riga International Film Festival (“Riga IFF”) and the New Riga Theater will host two premieres created by playwright Justīne Kļava and director Aiks Karapetjans. On October 17, the world premiere of the full-length mystical drama “Bezkaunīgie” is scheduled in the “Riga IFF” program, while on October 20, the JRT premiere of the tragicomedy “Felix, Anatoly and Ilona” is expected.
“Kultūrzīmes” spoke with Latvian Armenian director Aikas Karapetjans about creative ideas and what is happening in the cultural space of Latvia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
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– In both works, you work together with playwright Justini Kljava, how did your collaboration begin?
A. Karapetyans: – I had heard earlier that Justine is a good playwright, and since I didn’t want to write the film script myself, I decided to try working together, and the work went very well. The film’s characters are mostly in one location, so its setting is a bit like a theater. After the end of the filming period, I was offered to create a play at the New Riga Theater and I told Justine – we are writing!
– When applying the film “Bezkaunīgie” to the competition of the State Cultural Capital Fund, you described it as a horror film, perhaps even more impressive than “MOŽ”, which was shot at the time. Was it implemented?
– There are no corpses, no murders in this film, so it will not be as horrifying as “MOŽ”. We packaged it in genre language, and although it has a slightly scary atmosphere, it’s not a horror movie. On the surface, it is the story of a family trying to overcome a common tragedy and the difficult relationship between spouses. My goal was to create a suspense drama, but at the same time it is not realistic, it takes place in a conventional world and time; the heroes have reached a complete nowhere, civilization has remained far away. The action takes place in a private house outside the city, and they solve their problems there.
– Medieval paintings come to mind, where the characters have worms and snakes crawling out of their mouths… You have called the film terrifyingly entertaining.
– Insects already scare only one character of the film – the father, who is the only one who worries about them, besides, these insects do nothing bad at all. The world of insects is a parallel world that lives its own life, but at one point they intervene in the family life, becoming an incentive to expose and expose hidden family conflicts in front of each other. Yes, insects become a reason to finally start talking honestly with each other and to be able to deal with the feeling of shame for both past and present events. In the film, one of the characters says exactly that – don’t tell anyone about what happened, because otherwise there will be shame.
– Moving on to the production “Felix, Anatoly and Ilona” at JRT, what interested you in the nineties of the last century?
– I really wanted to make a show about how people come to terms with their unfulfilled dreams. I thought that the nineties are the most suitable period for our post-Soviet society when it comes to this topic. Back then, people had broader visions of the future, higher hopes than today. There were dreams, and people were not afraid to dream, and to talk about their dreams out loud. Now, our only dream is to try to return to those past events, when everything was still good, here I am thinking about the times before the pandemic and the war. Now many people think that we were doing well then, and the society no longer has a vision. Similarly, the hero of our show would like to return to Soviet times, when he supposedly had a job, an apartment, but now nobody needs him, his profession is no longer in demand. In the show, there are other characters who also dream. One – about life in America, another simply dreams of being loved and free. Sometimes they are naive, but dreams, but in my opinion, nowadays, we have completely forgotten that we can dream! Moreover, not only dreaming – we also lack a vision of how we want to live in the future, we often lack a plan and motivation. At the moment, it’s almost as if stagnation has set in, because nobody knows and can’t even predict what will happen tomorrow, so everyone thinks only about what’s happening here and now, we think about today and nobody thinks about tomorrow.
– In the nineties, we also used to say – although in the past, but freely…
– At that time I was twelve years old and, although I remember a lot, I still did not live the life of an adult. Maybe back then we were too light-hearted and gave up too easily, thinking that someone else would do everything for us. Maybe it is related to the past, history – Latvia lived in freedom for too short a time, there were always others who decided. Now we have realized that everything is in our own hands, but to some extent it is already too late. Of course, we could already do it, it still depends a lot on ourselves, but whatever we do, there should be a vision, however, in my opinion, there is no vision yet. For example, I don’t really understand where we are heading, where we are going.
– What could we do to regain the ability to dream?
– Start dreaming. Very specific – what and how we want and why. I don’t want to use such a banal concept as value, rather we need to understand – what do we want to leave to our children? I’m not talking about an apartment or even a piece of land, but about what kind of country and society we would like to live in. Since the nineties of the last century, we have tried to copy the efforts of other countries and societies, but currently, in our so many times cited example of the world of Western European values, a certain crisis has also occurred, what next?
If we talk about what I don’t like in Latvia, it is the education system, it is very weak here. Moreover, not only higher education, but also basic education is weak. I have met with young people in the last grades of school, they know nothing about the events of world history. The main issue of the country should be how to modernize the education system. We see what is happening in Russia – such strong state control is possible because the education system is subject to it. The less people know, the more susceptible they are. We are a democratic country, and one would imagine that it is important for our citizens to be educated, to have broad thinking, but our education does not provide such an opportunity. It doesn’t feel like the state representatives are interested in changing that.
– Yes, other problems are emerging and the education sector is being neglected…
– In terms of atmosphere, aggression, nothing good is currently happening in our society, and we will not be able to change this process in a year or two. Mindsets can be changed within a generation and can be achieved by educating the population. If the country starts thinking about it, in the best case, the first success will be only after ten, fifteen years. It won’t happen – let’s say that you have to be loyal to Latvia and everyone will be like that. It is true that we have state propaganda, but society cannot exist in two propagandas, it is impossible. Currently, there is a very short-sighted policy, all efforts and energy should be focused on education. We should start with teachers, I am sure that we have many cool and educated people, only they do not go to work in schools, because they cannot get a normal salary there, it is not prestigious.
– One of the values we are proud of is the Song Festival, but a few years ago you called this movement as belonging to a dictatorship regime. Last summer you made a movie called “Degsme” about the holiday, have you changed your mind now?
– I would like to clarify – at that time I said that the visuality of the Dance Festival looks a bit like the times of the totalitarian regime, because the crowd tries to perform one movement, which is corrected by the leader of the festival from the stand. Later it turned out that I was right, because we have really preserved the large-format tradition of the Dance Festival from Soviet times, before that Latvians only had the Song Festival. But these are national matters, and I don’t want to interfere, they are meant for national self-confidence. I am in better thoughts about what the Latvian people are capable of, we should not stop at the Song Festival, there are many other strong things on which to build national self-confidence. Any nation already has its own folk dances and songs, besides, it is known to immerse itself in the past. I think that it would be stronger to look for the individual achievements of Latvians, rather than abstract mass art in the past.
I won’t deny, this summer festival was a very impressive event, I watched a bit of it on TV. To me, as a non-Latvian, it may even seem beautiful and exotic, but I am against the fact that these values are “made into a religion”, saying – it is the best, most beautiful thing that we have. All this is very beautiful, but it is not the whole truth, we still have a lot of other values.
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– You are an Armenian from Latvia, and you can’t help but mention the recent events in Nagorno-Karabakh…
– What is happening is a great humiliation for Armenians. Like Russia, Azerbaijan also tries to meet its ambitions by force, they had chosen exactly the right time to attack and they did it. The president of Azerbaijan met with Putin just a day before the start of the war in Ukraine, and they signed an agreement on cooperation. In our experience, one should always choose the lesser evil, and this is not the first time that Russia has targeted Armenia. Already after the First World War, a large part of the territory of Armenia was granted to Turkey. Currently, Russia cooperates with Azerbaijan, and so does Turkey. Armenians are accused of having been with Russia and the current result was predictable. True, but there aren’t many choices in that region anymore, there are only two big empires, Turkey and Russia. These days I see how many people still don’t know about this conflict, they just read the news headlines. Then there are those who try to explain something, but talk about legal matters, but outside of them are human matters. I look at all this as a very important historical event, after which it would be very important to understand how to respond to it. I am disappointed at the moment, because even after this great and public humiliation of Armenians, silence continues in the political forces and society of many countries. I hope that it will end, because for years we have been told about some Western values, democracy, our people selflessly support Ukraine, which protects its democracy, fights against the attacking totalitarian neighbor, but at the same time we are silent about what is happening in Armenia.
Themes
2023-10-12 11:12:33
#lack #vision #future #conversation #director #Aika #Karapetyan
