FILM - ADAA: Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance

2011 BoSton Film Festival

4th ADAA / MFA Boston Armenian Film Festival

Stephane Kazandjian

Stephane Kazandjian is a writer / director based in Paris. After "Sexy Boys" (2001) - which is now considered the first French teen movie - and "Modern love" (2008) - a tribute to romantic comedies and musicals - "Michel G, King of the World' is his third feature film. He also wrote the feature length 3D animation movie "A Monster in Paris", directed by "Shark Tale" director, Bibo Bergeron which screened at the Toronto Film Festival and was recently released in France.

Lévon Minasian

Born in Leninakan (re-named Gyumri), Armenia, Levon Minasian commenced his theatre studies at the Institute of Fine Arts and Theatre in Yerevan (Armenia). He worked as an actor at the Araspel and Vardan Adjemian Theatres in Gumri. He studied film at the University of Paris-8 (France). In 1996, he receives his Master’s Diploma with distinction with the congratulations of the jury.
He is an awarded scriptwriter, also has directed short films, produced mainly by French production companies.

Khajag Soudjian

Khajag Soudjian was born and educated in Paris. At 22, his first music video appeared in the Festival International des Arts du Clip. Based on his first film, July in Ledjap, he was invited to the Berlinale Talent Campus of the 2008 Berlin Film Festival. He has since completed two shorts that have garnered many festival prizes and is currently directing two TV shows for French television.

Shareen Anderson

Shareen Anderson is an award-winning, independent filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York and Johannesburg, South Africa and the founder of Fort Greene Filmworks, a company that specializes in documentary filmmaking. For Al Jazeera English, Shareen co-directed and co-produced the critically-acclaimed eight-part documentary series entitled "Saving Soweto", and a one hour documentary entitled "Forgotten Freedom Fighters". Charents: In Search of My Armenian Poet is her feature-length documentary directorial debut.

Serge Avedikian

Serge Avedikian is a director and actor. He has directed documentary films (Sans retour possible, Que sont mes camarades devenus, Irina Brook: le plaisir contagieux, Nous avons bu la même eau), short and medium length dramatic films (Bonjour Monsieur, Au revoir Madame, M'sieurs Dames, Mission accomplie), film poems (J'ai bien connu le soleil, Le cinquième rêve, Lux aeterna, Terra emota) and three animated films ("Ligne de vie", "Un beau matin" et "Chienne d'histoire"). "Chienne d'histoire" received the "Palme d'Or for short film at Cannes in 2010. He is currently working on a dramatic feature film.

Braden King

Braden King co-directed the film DUTCH HARBOR: WHERE THE SEA BREAKS ITS BACK, a lyric, non-fiction meditation on the life and landscape of an Aleutian Island community off the coast of Alaska. Recent non-narrative work includes HEAVEN IS A PLACE / NOTHING EVER HAPPENS and THE STORY IS STILL ASLEEP. King’s work has been screened on all major U.S. broadcast networks, HBO, the BBC, Sundance Channel, MTV, Channel 4 (UK) and others.

Comes Chahbazian

Comes Chahbazian graduated as assistant director at Conservatoire Libre du Cinéma Française (Paris, 2001) and in International Commerce in 1998 (Brussels). Between 1995 and 1999, both in Belgium and in the USA, he took courses in cinema and theater, acting, circus techniques, acrobatics, mime and photography. In 2002, he wrote, photographed and directed four short films screened in a number of international festivals. Ici Bas won the Silver Apricot Award in the Golden Apricot film festival in 2010.

Eric Kabera

Eric Kabera is a Rwandan documentary and fiction filmmaker and producer. He collaborated on one of the first fictionalized films about the genocide, 100 Days (dir. Nick Hughes), and has participated in a variety of projects related to the process of memorialization and commemoration of the events of 1994 and their aftermath. Kabera is also the founder of the Rwanda Cinema Centre and the Rwanda Film Festival.

Mathieu Zeitindjioglou

After studying painting and applied art, I turned myself to motion pictures which appeared to me as the ultimate forms of art and expression. As it mixes both, the most primitive form of communication, as images, symbols and sounds, with the most sophisticated forms of narration and intellectual reflexion. Through these two extremes, I feel motion pictures help to explore the enigmatic nature of the human being's behavior. Through my films, I attempt to touch both the mind and the heart of spectators, to reach a sense of togetherness of humanity.