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KHACHATURIAN
Zareh joined the production of Khachaturian as associate producer, working with Emmy-Award winning filmmaker Peter Rosen, producer and director of over 100 full-length films and television programs. Zareh traveled to Armenia to direct interviews with key contemporaries and family members of Khachaturian, and filmed extensively at historic locations in Yerevan and Tbilisi, Georgia, Khachaturian’s birthplace.
Over the course of the three years it took to complete Khachaturian, Zareh also researched and selected a wealth of rare Soviet newsreel footage and still photographs for the film during several long trips to Armenia. Much of this material had never been seen in the west before, or shown publicly at all. One of the most important finds was a 35mm negative of cellist Mstislav Rostropovich performing Khachaturian’s cello concerto, with the composer conducting the USSR Radio & Television Orchestra. The footage had been rescued in the 1980’s by cinematographer Ashot Movsesian. While visiting a lab in Moscow, Movsesian had learned that the authorities had ordered the performance destroyed in response to Rostropovich’s defection. Thanks to a lab technician, an Armenian native of Karabakh who felt duty-bound to rescue the footage, and Movsesian who smuggled it back to Armenia, this priceless document was saved, and can be seen along with other historic performances in the film, as well as in its entirety on the forthcoming DVD release of Khachaturian.
As with the rest of his work, Khachaturian has personal significance for Zareh, who grew up with the composer’s music thanks to his father, composer/conductor Loris Tjeknavorian. Tjeknavorian knew Aram Khachaturian personally and has championed his work through a series of legendary recordings and performances over the past 30 years. His recent recordings with the Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra provide the soundtrack to the film.
Critically acclaimed, Khachaturian won Best Documentary at the 2003 Hollywood Film Festival and is the brainchild of executive producer Dora Serviarian-Kuhn, a concert pianist whose celebrated recording of the composer’s piano concerto compelled her to make a film of his controversial and fascinating life.
The story takes place in the former Soviet Union – a place of unique juxtapositions; of idealism and terror, heroism and betrayal, high culture and foolish pretension. What kind of art could flourish under these conditions, and how did artists, writers, and composers cope with the arbitrary nature of Socialist Realism?
This film is about the life of a composer creating in the darkness of a tragic era. A life full of contradictions: Was Aram Khachaturian playing the fool for Stalinism, or composing music that cried out against its evils? Was he a Soviet favorite musical son, or a sacrificial lamb? A loyal subject of the Kremlin, or secret dissident? An Armenian composer, rooted to his heritage, or the New Socialist Man? As the film reveals, like most Soviet citizens, Khachaturian hid a complex private life behind a mask of Communist loyalty.
The core of Khachaturian’s music was overtly Armenian, using its melodies and rhythms, simple and pure, to infuse his ballets, concertos, and symphonies. He was also influenced by the American music of the time, the jazz of the 1930s and 40s. In his famous “Sabre Dance”, Khachaturian combined an Armenian wedding folk tune with a jazz saxaphone. How Khachaturian’s Armenian ethnicity played out against the high status of his Soviet politics is the great contradiction of his epic life story.
Khachaturian. A Seventh Art Releasing release of a Kuhn Foundation presentation of a Peter Rosen Production. Narrated by Eric Bogosian/Music by Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, Loris Tjeknavorian (conductor)/Associate Producer Zareh Tjeknavorian/Written by Bill Van Horn and Solomon Volkov based on the writings of Aram Khachaturian/Edited by Aaron Kuhn/ Executive Producer Robert Lawrence Kuhn/Executive Producer Dora Serviarian-Kuhn/Produced and Directed by Peter Rosen
With: Solomon Volkov, Karen Khatchaturian, Mstislav Rostropovich, Vladimir Vasiliev, Tikhon Khrennikov, Alexander Haroutunian, Emin Khatchaturian, and Edward Mirzoyan
83 minutes, 35mm and video, color/B&W (English, Armenian & Russian dialogue)
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