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former Fresnan and reciptant of "Lifetime Achievement" in Acting
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The two films I had the pleasure of viewing at worldwide premieres "Abstraction" and "Orphans of the Genocide" are nominated in different categories (Film, and Documentary)
Special Awards Honors Go To Sid Haig (Lifetime Achievement Award)
Matthew Van Dyke (Armin T. Wegner Humanitarian Award) Sev Ohanian (Breakthrough
Filmmaker Award) September 26th-29th, 2013 at the Egyptian Theatre
LOS ANGELES—The 16th Annual Arpa International Film Festival (September 26
-29, Egyptian Theatre, Hollywood) today announced the members of the 2013 jury,
along with the nominations for the nine awards they will grant. Festival
Director Alex Kalognomos also announced this year’s Special Awards recipients,
Actor Sid Haig and Producers Matthew Van Dyke (
Not Anymore: A Story of
Revolution) and Sev Ohanian (
Fruitvale Station). The honorees
will be feted at the festival’s Closing Night Gala on Sunday, September 29 at
7:30pm, with red carpet and screening of the film,
Masque, directed by
Robert Hatch. The Closing Night Gala will include a dinner reception. Tickets
are $45 and can be reserved at
www.itsmyseat.com/affma.
2013 Special Awards
Arpa founder and head, Sylvia Minassian, noted that, “The 2013 nominees and
Special Awards recipients Matthew VanDyke and Sev Ohanian truly reflect the
festival’s core philosophy, which is to cultivate cultural understanding and
global empathy. These are films which shed light on people and places that Los
Angeles audiences might only know from the news. Matthew’s film follows two
people on the front lines of the conflict in Syria, while Sev’s film shows the
tragic effects of cultural divide here in the United States. ”
Minassian continued, “Our Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Sid Haig in
recognition of a remarkable and ongoing career in which he has and will
continue to create memorable characters. We are honored to applaud him for his
contributions to the cinematic community”
Matthew Van Dyke is the recipient of this year’s prestigious Armin T. Wegner
Humanitarian Award – named after German author and human rights activist Armin
Theophil Wegner – for the documentary short
Not Anymore: A Story of
Revolution. The film follows two young Syrians, Mowya, a 32 year-old rebel
commander and 24 year-old female journalist, Nour, in Aleppo, Syria. Both have
had their lives torn apart by the war.
Producer and Arpa alumni Sev Ohanian, whose film
My Big Fat Armenian
Family entertained audiences at the 2008 Arpa festival, will receive the
2013 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award for his award-winning
Fruitvale Station.
The film – which was the winner of both the Grand Jury Prize for dramatic
feature and the Audience Award for U.S. dramatic film at the 2013 Sundance Film
Festival, and, a Best First Feature for Director Ryan Coogler at the Cannes
Film Festival in May – tells the story of Oscar Grant whose fateful encounter
at the Fruitvale subway stop on New Year’s Day 2009 rocked the nation to its
very core.
This year’s special awards include Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Sid
Haig, whose 50-year acting career includes more than 80 films and 350
television series. Haig’s performances include such films as
Hatchet 3,
The Devil’s Rejects,
Jackie Brown and
Kill Bill: Vol. 2.
His chilling portrayal of the fun-loving but lethal Captain Spaulding in
House
Of 1000 Corpses has earned him an induction into the Horror Hall of Fame –
along with the cache of being one of the major Horror icons of the 21st
Century.
Past Arpa Special Award recipients include Academy Award® nominees Atom
Egoyan (
The Sweet Hereafter) and Shoreh Aghdashloo (
House Of Sand
And Fog); award-winning producers Robert Papazian, Jim Hirsh, Arthur
Sarkissian (
Rush Hour), Hank Moonjean (
Dangerous Liaisons);
Dr. J. Michael Hagopian and Carla Garapedian (Armin T. Wegner Award
recipients), and Mardik Martin (
Raging Bull) as well as Michael
Pogosian (
If Only Everyone) and Frances Fisher (
Titanic) to
name a few. Previous award presenters include Ken Davitian, Vivica A. Fox,
Alanis Morissette, Tippi Hedren, Missi Pyle, Alison Janney, Arsine Khanjian,
Marilu Henner, Tony Shaloub, Cheech Marin, Alfonso Herrera, Dean Cain, and Ann
Magnuson.
2013 Jury Members
This year’s distinguished jury includes actor, producer and writer Charles
Agron (
Haunted), actor James Duke Mason (
What Happens Next),
producer and 2013 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award recipient Sev Ohanian (
Fruitvale
Station), award-winning actor/playwright Felix Pire (
12 Monkeys),
award-winning producer Howard Rosenman (
Common Threads: Stories from the
Quilt) and British writer/filmmaker Sebastian Siegel (
Love Sex God.
Part 1, Awakening World). See biographies below.
Jury-Award Nominations
The following films have been nominated for “Best” Jury Awards in their
categories:
Best Documentary:
Figure of Armen,
Fracknation,
Orphans
of Genocide,
Two: The Story of Roman and Nyro, and
Welcome
Nowhere. Best Short Film:
Half Good Killer,
Lao, Luminoso,
Masque, Perfrect Day; Rose, Mary and Time, Subhuman. Best Music Video:
Ganesh Is Fresh,
Moonbeam,
Safe and Sound by Capital
Cities,
Switzerland by The Dewars, and
Beautiful by Vassy;
Best Feature nominees will also be eligible for Best Screenplay and Best
Director prizes. The five nominees are:
Abstraction, Always Faithful, Kral
Yolu, My Name Is Viola, and
The Power of Few.
As previously announced, The Opening Night Film, on Thursday, September 26
will be the North American premiere of
My Name Is Viola Featuring two
luminous female leads, Lusine Alexanian in the title role and Janet Spitzer as
her hero/nemesis. The program includes two Centerpiece Films. On Friday
September 27, the feature is
Abstraction, by Los-Angeles
indie-director Prince Bagdasarian. The intense crime drama stars Korrina Rico,
Ken Davitian, Natalie Victoria, and Eric Roberts. On Saturday, September 28 it
is the multiple-perspective urban crime drama
The Power of Few, by
writer/director Leone Marucci and starring Christopher Walken, Christian
Slater, Anthony Anderson, Juvenile and executive produced by Roy Kurtluyan.
Sunday’s Closing Night film (September 29) will be the award-winning drama
Masque,
directed by Robert Hatch and starring Lauren Holly and Wilford Brimley.
Arpa International Film Festival ticket prices are: General screenings $13,
Centerpiece film and reception $25, Opening and Closing dinner receptions $45.
For more information and the full film lineup, schedule, and tickets visit
www.affma.org.
2013 Jury Biographies
Producer, writer and actor Charles Agron is a native of Los Angeles
California, and raised in Santa Barbara, California. Agron’s first screenplay,
Haunted,
was directed by Victor Salva, stars Tobin Bell, and will be released in 2014.
In 2012, he formed Charles Agron Productions, where he currently has several
projects in development. His next feature
Monday at 11:01 A.M.” is
slated to begin production at the beginning of next year.
A graduate of UC Santa Barbara with a degree in Law and Society, he then
attended UCLA to study Pre-med. Moving to Washington DC, he took a position as
a lobbyist with the National Physicians Association, a company that advocates
for the rights of doctors. He then began training with Lena Harris, protégé of
Baruch Lumet and director Sydney Lumet’s father, in her acting program at 20th
Century Fox. Agron returned to Los Angeles landing roles in commercials and
independent films while studying with Melissa Scoff and his current acting
coach and Actors Studio alumnus, John Sarno.
James Duke Mason is an American actor. The son of Go-Go’s lead singer
Belinda Carlisle and producer Morgan Mason (
Sex, Lies, and Videotape),
and grandson of the late British actor James Mason, his first film,
What
Happens Next, was released in 2012. He will next star in the drama
Jack
& Lem, which will shoot in 2014. Since January 2012, he has served as
a member of the Board of Directors of
Outfest, the youngest person
ever to be appointed in the organization’s 30-year history. In 2011 he was
selected by Out magazine to be included in their “Out 100” list, and he also
was selected in 2010 as one of The Advocate’s “Forty Under 40.” He has worked
on behalf of various political candidates and has written for publications such
as The Huffington Post and The Advocate, and been featured on the “E!” Channel,
as well as on TV programs such as “Nancy Grace”, “Politicking with Larry King”
and “Dr. Phil”.
With over 20 years in the entertainment industry, Felix Pire is an actor in
Film and TV, an acting professor, and an independent producer-writer-director.
His many acting credits include
12 Monkeys (opposite Brad Pitt and
Bruce Willis, and directed by Terry Gilliam) and
Phatgirlz (opposite
Mo’Nique). In 1997, Pire won the New York Outer Critic’s Circle Award for
Outstanding Solo Performance in for “Men on the Verge of a His-Panic Breakdown”
by Guillermo Reyes. His one-man play “The Origins of Happiness in Latin”, won
the California Community Foundation’s Brody Grant and the 2001 National Latino
Playwriting Award. His screenplay, “Hurricane Nena”, (written at HBO’s Latino
Screenwriting Workshop), won a Certificate in Recognition of Creative
Excellence in 2003 from ABC Television’s Talent Development Program.
Pire is a 2008 graduate of the Producer’s Guild of America’s Diversity
Program. He has produced, directed & edited commercials for
Spanish-language TV station, Azteca. He continues to create the award-winning
Latino puppet webisodes of “LosTiteres.TV“, which have led to his being trained
and hired as a television puppeteer by the Jim Henson Company. He also became a
part of their live improv puppet comedy show, “Stuffed & Unstrung“. Other
web series include a self-named cartoon series “The Felix Pire Show” and a
sexy, urban comedy, “Latinas En L.A.”
A Los Angeles native, Sev Ohanian has been an active filmmaker since high
school. At the age of 20, he produced and self-distributed
My Big Fat
Armenian Family, a feature-film that became extremely popular with
Armenian audiences around the world. Shortly after, he attended the USC School
of Cinematic Arts MFA program, using the profits from his film to pay for
tuition. While at film school, he focused on producing several ambitious short
films in collaboration with fellow students. Since graduating, he was the
Co-Producer on
Fruitvale Station, a feature film written and directed
by Ryan Coogler, starring Michael B. Jordan and Octavia Spencer. The film
premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize
and Audience Award. It also premiered at the 2013 Cannes International Film
Festival. The film was acquired by The Weinstein Company and released in
theaters everywhere in July 2013. Sev recently finished producing
The
Labyrinth, a feature film project for James Franco’s Rabbit Bandini
Productions, in collaboration with USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.
Award-winning producer Howard Rosenman has been responsible for several
box-office hits during his career, including
The Main Event starring
Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal, and two-time Academy Award® nominee
Resurrection
starring Ellen Burstyn and Sam Shepard, with producing partner Renee Missel.
While co-heading production at Sandollar with producer Carol Baumhe, Rosenman
produced several projects including
Father of The Bride, and
Gross
Anatomy (about Rosenman’s years in medical school), and Harvey Fierstein’s
Tidy Endings for HBO, which garnered two Emmy Award nominations and
two Cable ACE Awards. Also during this time, Rosenman served as Executive
Producer of the Oscar-winning
Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt,
by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman
He subsequently formed Howard Rosenman Productions and produced
The
Family Man, Noel starring Susan Sarandon, Penélope Cruz and Robin Williams
and
You Kill Me, starring Sir Ben Kingsley and Téa Leoni.
Rosenman is Co-Founder of Project Angel Food in Los Angeles, a
meals-on-wheels program for people living with life-threatening diseases
including AIDS and cancer.
Sebastian Siegel is a British-American actor, writer and filmmaker. He
wrote, produced and directed the acclaimed two-part documentary,
Love Sex
God, Part 1: Awakening World, which premiered at festivals to
standing-room-only audiences, including the largest audience in the history of
the Sedona International Film Festival.
Awakening World was the
Centerpiece Film at Arpa’s 2012 Festival. Sebastian adapted the screenplay for
Ken Wilber’s book and true story,
Grace and Grit, and recently wrote,
produced and directed the trailer for EuroCinema Hawaii. He has played pivotal
character roles on “The Finder”, “Hawaii Five-0”, “Lost”, “Family Guy”, and
“The Family That Preys.” Sebastian writes on psychology and philosophy for The
Huffington Post
