Чекнаворян Зарех

Чекнаворьян Зарех

Tjeknavorian Zareh

Producer/Director – Zareh Tjeknavorian Зарех Чекнаворьян

Over the past ten years Zareh’s experience as a filmmaker has mirrored an on-going rediscovery of his heritage: a rediscovery that has fueled his passion for following stories that explore cultures and personalities long hidden from the west. Based in New York City, Zareh’s wide-ranging interests and diverse international background continue to inform his work.

Zareh was born in Fargo, North Dakota in 1969, and spent his childhood living in Iran, England, Germany and France before graduating from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 1992. Since then he has lived and worked extensively in Armenia, Russia and New York, producing several documentaries, including the award-winning Enemy of the People, about life during the Stalin Terror in Armenia, narrated by Eric Bogosian and broadcast on KCET (Los Angeles) and WGBH (Boston). In their March 2004 issue, National Geographic Magazine recommended Enemy of the People as one of three essential films about the Armenians, along with Atom Egoyan’s Ararat and Sergei Paradjanov’s The Color of Pomegranates.

Most recently Zareh was associate producer for Khachaturian, a documentary feature about the life of the great Soviet-Armenian composer, produced by Emmy Award winning filmmaker Peter Rosen for the Kuhn Foundation. Directing interviews and filming on-location in Armenia and Georgia, Zareh also researched and selected a wealth of rare Soviet newsreel footage and still photographs (many never seen in the West before) for the film. Khachaturian, distributed by Seventh Art Releasing, opened at the Quad in New York and was awarded Best Documentary at the 2003 Hollywood Film Festival. Zareh returned to Armenia for his short, Embers of the Sun, about Armenia’s prehistoric rock art and megaliths. It has been broadcast twice on national television in Armenia and was an official selection at the 2001 AFFMA Film Festival in Hollywood, the Armenian Film Festival in New York City in 2002 and the Armenian Film Festival in San Francisco in 2004.

Zareh lives in New York City with his wife, Alina. Currently he is working on a documentary trilogy called Living Antiquity: Forgotten Peoples of the Near East. The first film in the series, East of Turkey, North of Iran: Armenia on the Crossroads of History is now in pre-production, with shooting to be commenced in the summer of 2004. East of Turkey, North of Iran explores the ancient cultural roots of the Armenians through their surviving pre-Christian traditions and monuments. http://www.naregatsi.org/Zareh/