Ararat Press Kit
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Shooting began in Toronto on Monday, May 21, 2001. In addition to some sound stage work, the production essentially shot the film on location for the first eight weeks of the schedule. The final week of filming took place in and around the Drumheller, Alberta area, where over 500 local extras were recruited to help re-create the disturbing desert death marches.
Many sites and sights of Toronto were used, including the Art Gallery of Ontario; the Pantages Theater; the George Ignatieff Theatre at Trinity College at University of Toronto (the same theater where Egoyan's early plays were performed and where one of his early films became the first movie to be screened there) and Clarke Beach Park a.k.a. Cherry Beach, where production designer Phillip Barker and his art and set departments designed and constructed the largest set built for the film, the streets of Van (pronounced "vawn").
"As most of the world now knows, Toronto is a great city to make films," says Egoyan, "and for the Aznavour-directed Ararat, I incorporated the notion that someone else from outside Canada has come to Toronto to make his film. That notion helps support the very contemporary, very Toronto feel."
Needless to say, Egoyan and his creative production, design and technical teams relied on a great deal of research in order to capture the authentic look and feel of the scenes set between 1912 and 1915.
"While doing some of my research, I discovered the compelling story of the siege of the city of Van," says Egoyan. "Van was a city with a large Armenian population which was able to defend itself using primitive old rifles against the most modern sort of European artillery. The city held off the Turkish forces for a number of weeks."
Egoyan continues: "I also found an actual historical account written by an American missionary, Clarence Ussher, who was stationed in Van and was witness to the Turkish atrocities. So, the film that Edward Saroyan (Charles Aznavour) is coming to Toronto to make is based on that document which is called 'An American Missionary in Turkey,' published in Boston and New York in 1917."
"Bruce Greenwood's character of Martin portrays Ussher," explains Egoyan, "who was this heroic figure who was able to ensure that the American Mission in Van remained the safe zone in which the women and children could hide. There was a hospital inside the Mission and Ussher made sure that no guns came inside and that it remained absolutely neutral. It's sort of an Alamo-type story. I was very faithful to that text. It was an amazing thing to discover."
Egoyan continues: "I also discovered through my research that Arshile Gorky, the very important abstract impressionist painter whose work figures prominently in the film, was a young boy in Van during the siege. It was too irresistible not to incorporate information like that into the script."
Arshile Gorky, born Vosdanig Manoog Adoin in Armenia, is considered to be one of the fathers of Abstract Expressionism. After his mother died in the genocide, Gorky and his sister immigrated to the United States. One of his most famous paintings, "The Artist and His Mother", part of the Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, is featured prominently in Ararat.
"Phillip (Barker) and his departments created an absolutely beautiful and authentic streetscape for me," says Egoyan, "and we filled the streets with passionate and enthusiastic members of the Armenian community in and around the Toronto area. On any given day, the set could be pristine and lively for the scenes that take place in 1912 or destroyed and deadly as the town is pillaged and burned by the Turkish soldiers in 1915."
ì"veryone wanted to help," says Egoyan, "and be involved because they all saw it as a very unique opportunity to step back in time and revisit a part of their history and culture that they have been told about since their childhoods."
"Everyday, an Armenian jeweler named Ara Run, who lost both sets of grandparents in the genocide, would close up his shop and bring all of his most expensive jewelry down to the set," says Egoyan. "Then there is George Yeremian who has provided the rugs for every one of my films all the way back to 'Next of Kin.' Every one has their own unique story to tell and by participating as extras in the Van street scenes, maybe they felt they were getting to tell part of their story."
"What is sadly amazing about all this re-creation," concludes Egoyan, "is what we re-created just stopped existing one day in 1915. Once there was a huge Armenian population in Turkey, lively streets, families walking to church and then one day, it just disappeared forever."
Actor Bruce Greenwood, a man close to Egoyan and his work, was moved by so many of the film's extras and how they represented Egoyan's idea of Ararat as a film about living proof.
"I think the living proof, for example, are some of the extras in the film," says Greenwood. "I remember one man who worked in one of my scenes who was 93 years old. So the living proof is ever aging and with that aging comes the inability to recognize as much and the easier it becomes to forget what happened. If we don't acknowledge the living proof now, it will first become a memory, then it will become a distant memory, then an unreachable memory and, finally, it becomes a non-event."