Armenians end whirlwind tour of Hollywood on the Delaware

As local Armenian Americans and others looked on, Vardan Hakobyan of Yerevan's International Film Festival handed a palm-size ancient Armenian bell to International Visitors Council vice president Ann Stauffer at the council's Arch Street offices.

For visitors from a former Soviet republic that now is a tiny, landlocked state of only three million people and 29,000 square kilometers - one-fourteenth the size of historic Armenia - it seemed just the right gesture at a Tuesday public forum to bring their mutual adventure to a close.

Stauffer had been chief hostess and den mother to Hakobyan and nine other members of Armenia's film world as they raced around the Philadelphia area for the last three weeks, forging links with filmmakers and scholars here while staying with host families. (The group flies home from Philadelphia International Airport tonight.)

"Before coming," Harkobyan explained in Armenian, quickly translated by local interpreter Asbet Balanian, "we did know that your symbol was a bell."

Harkobyan paused before making the presentation, confirming that show-biz timing stretches from Hollywood to Yerevan.

"I don't know how very old it is," he deadpanned, "but the main thing is that it doesn't have a crack."

Nor, it appeared, was there any flaw in the Armenians' generously scheduled tour.

It took them to, among many places, an IMAX theater, the Comcast Center, International House, NFL Films, and even Manhattan for a quick visit to film sites.

For Hakobyan, the most important stop was the Greater Philadelphia Film Office. "The first thing I learned," he said, "was the tax breaks that the state offers to people. . . . Where we are, there's no such thing."

Hasmik Ysaturyan, a scriptwriter and lecturer in Yerevan, exulted over visiting film classes at Temple and Drexel Universities.

"I actually saw a dialogue between a student and the professor where the student wasn't asleep!" Ysaturyan exclaimed. "Of course, the technology everywhere we went was astounding. . . . If we had 1 percent of that, we might be able to move mountains."

Siranush Galstyan, who also teaches cinema studies in Yerevan, gushed about a presentation by film curator Michael McGonigle at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

"This man knew about all different countries and their films, and the top level of artistic films," she said. "His way of thinking was very close to my heart."

At Tuesday's IVC session, which featured nine of the 10 visitors (one had to return home early), several speakers drew contrasts between their world and ours.

Arsen Arakelyan, director of Armenia's National Film Center, quoted an Armenian painter who described his country as "an open museum under the sky."

In Armenia, observed Arakelyan - young, droll, and Tarantino-like in striped T-shirt - "a thousand-year old monument is considered new and recent." (That prompted Stauffer to apologize for the Philadelphia notion that buildings 200 years old are historical.)

Arakelyan joked that one of Columbus' crew members was Armenian, "so we claim Armenian involvement in the discovery of America." He alluded to Armenia's tragic history - notably, the Armenian genocide of 1915-18, in which the Ottomans annihilated an estimated 1.2 million people - explaining, "If you look into the eyes of an Armenian woman, they're very beautiful, they're very nice, and they're always sad."

Still, he preferred to emphasize that Armenians maintain their sense of humor (see Ken Davitian, the short guy, in Borat) and love of family, making them ideal for show business.

Valeri Gasparyan, another lecturer in Yerevan, provided further context on his country's film industry, explaining that the country produced only "six to eight films" a year in its best times.

Oddly, that doesn't include many about the genocide. While almost everything cultural about Armenia in the United States involves the topic, it remains inadequately rendered onto film at home because the Soviet Union banned the theme. Now, as a historic subject, said acting teacher Garegin Grigoryan, it would take "a lot of funding."

After the formal presentations, all the Armenians present agreed that they consider the seven million Armenians of the diaspora part of them.

"We live in Armenia," said Grigoryan, "but whenever we hear anything about an Armenian anywhere in the world, we feel proud. Even when we hear about a bad Armenian, we still feel proud that the best of the bad is an Armenian."

Manuel Karian, an actor born and bred in Philadelphia who helped interpret for the visitors, seconded the idea.

"I've lived in Armenia and worked on films there for a year, and I've gone five times," Karian said. The Philadelphia area alone, Karian explained, boasts five active Armenian churches, as well as Radnor's Armenian Sisters Academy.

To Grigoryan, Philadelphia was "a lot more relaxed and peaceful" than expected.

Pushed on that, he admitted finding its nightlife "slow" compared to "the hustle and bustle" of Yerevan, which is "more like New York."

"Here," he said, "it seems that people just want to go home, be by themselves and relax."

He was, of course, staying with a host family in Yardley. But one more trip and he'll figure out the Yardley-Philadelphia thing.