Filmadaran Film Culture Development NGO

Filmadaran Film Culture Development NGO was founded in 2016 by the organizers of the Apricot Tree Ujan International Documentary Film Festival and to this day it is presided by filmmaker and film scholar Garegin Zakoyan.
The organization has a goal of developing and spreading appreciation and understating for cinema Armenia and fostering the creation of new films as well as the dialogue between local and foreign creative individuals. Currently, the members of Filmadaran have overall translated around 200 foreign films to Armenian for the first time and presented them during various events to urban and rural audiences in Armenia.
Filmadaran’s main initiative is the Apricot Tree Ujan International Documentary Film Festival.
The organization is also active in the field of publishing (the album-book My Yerevan was released in 2019, the second edition of Parajanov: Letters from Prison in 2020, Parajanov: Intermezzo in 2021, all prepared by Filmadaran and published by Antares printing house) and the production of documentary and experimental films, namely Shadow Theatre (2016), Ayrudzi (2017, co-produced by Folk Arts Hub Foundation), Andrei Bely: Armenia (2019, with the support of the Andrei Bely Museum in Moscow). 2021 saw the release of Filmadaran’s Iranian-Armenian co-production Ujan Story by Iranian filmmaker Shahram Badakhshan Mehr, who first visited Armenia 2017 as a participant of the Apricot Tree film festival and after being inspired by the everyday life in Ujan, decided to make a feature-length documentary here. Currently, Filmadaran is developing 2 more documentary film projects – Memories of Baku (eye-witness recollections of the 1990 Armenian massacres in Baku) and The History of Armenian Cinema (a feature-length of Armenian film).
Since 2018, Filmadaran is closely cooperating with Goethe-Zentrum Eriwan, coordinating the organization’s offline and online film clubs. Almost every week would see the screening and discussion of classic and modern German films, all translated into Armenian for the first time by Filmadaran members. In total, 60 films were screened, 55 were translated and 26 online discussions took place within the frames of the film club from mid 2018 to early 2022.
Filmadaran also organizes various workshops. The Black Field: about the poetic reality of film workshop was organized in 2019 in cooperation with Goethe-Zentrum Eriwan and headed by renowned German cinematographer and film director Fred Kelemen, who conducted week-long practical lessons with 14 Armenian film students, which resulted in the creation of numerous short study-films.
In April of the same year within the frames of an experience exchange program, organized by Filmadaran and the German High Art Bureau organization with the support of the German Embassy in Armenia, students of Berlin’s Film and Television Academy (DFFB) arrived in Armenia to interact with their peers from the Directing Faculty of the Russian-Armenian (Slavonic) University.
In December of 2021 Filmadaran organized the Modern French Film week in Yerevan with the support of the French Embassy in Armenia, during which 7 of the best French films of the 2010’s, most of which were translated into Armenian for the first time, were presented to Armenian audiences.
On October 7th 2021 Filmadaran president Garegin Zakoyan gave a special lecture on Sergei Parajanov within the frames of the Belgrade International Festival of Ethnological Film, which later the same day screened 5 Armenian documentaries, compiled in cooperation between Filmadaran and the festival.
Since March of 2022, Filmadaran is also organizing the Ciné club of the Embassy of France in Armenia, the screenings of which take place in the National Library of Armenia.