The Vancouver Eastside Culture Crawl 2009

The Crawl, as it is affectionately known, is one of several throughout BC, and likely the largest of it's type in the province. Over 300 artists and over 60 separate studios and galleries make this three day event a real smorgasbord of artistic expression. Certainly there were many things which to me said very little - that is not such a surprise because I was almost exclusively interested in painting. Even so, there was a great deal to like, and more than anything else I just love being around artists, or rather, I enjoy the conversations between painters and non-painters:

Visitor: "so, how do you decide what your paintings are worth?"
Artist: "It's based on lots of things"
Visitor: "A painter down the hall had paintings twice this size and they were a lot cheaper."
(blank stare from artist)

There were lots of cringe -worthy moments like this. I literally ran through most of the Crawl, but once I found something I liked, I spent quite a lot of time there and thus witnessed many episodes. I guess some people have no way of controlling their inner idiot. I don't know if I could stand dealing with the onslaught of people. I could understand if I was selling McDonald's hamburgers; I could care less, there is no vested interest. But something as personal as a painting, something which I have spent hours on, which is an artistic vision which I've worked hard to capture....I might have a tendency to, oh, I don't know, maybe look around furtively for a fire axe.

The other thing which is rather spooky is that quite a lot of people with cameras were taking pictures of anything they liked. I'm a big believer in allowing unrestricted photography in museums - by and large most of the paintings in museums were done by artists who are long dead and since most museums are funded by tax dollars, I feel I should have the right to study these paintings any way I like so long as I do not detract from this same enjoyment by others. Many enlightened museums also have this policy. However, taking pictures of an artist's paintings, in his studio, most especially with the artist around... I don't know, it strikes me as a bit brazen, if not downright ignorant.

Here, in no particular order, were my favourite artists from this year's crop. Clicking on their names will take you to their websites:

Patricia Atchison
Patty Ampleford
Roselina Hung
Krystian Guevara
Madelaine Wood
Jane Wolsak


As this was entirely an aesthetic outing for me, I tried not to think about money while I'm appreciating a work of art. However, when the price of a work is displayed next to it (along with it's name), it's somewhat impossible to not notice. I made the rounds again on Sunday, and I noticed that there was a very strong correlation between what I liked and the probability of the work being sold. Having said that, very little was sold, and as with any undertaking that has a relatively low barrier of entry, (or no barriers at all, anyone can put out a shingle and declare themselves to be an artist, ((and that is pretty much as it should be)) the supply is obviously far exceeding the demand, which is a shame, as there were many things that I thought were really very reasonably priced knowing from experience how much work was involved and of a really high calibre - and a great deal more that was outrageously over-priced and of questionable merit. Somehow I don't think I would pay $250 for a framed piece of cardboard with a single Cheezie(tm) glued to it.

I suspect as well that there are certain economic realities involved in the geography. Many of the people attending were probably from East Vancouver, and the people who are more likely to spend a few thousand on a painting probably live outside of East Vancouver, so that may be a factor. That may not always be the case, however, real estate prices being what they are, and very little in the area selling for much under 3/4 of a million, it's quite obvious that a huge gentrification is taking place, and while making the area far more accessible and a lot less edgy, the risk is that artists and others whose existence is predicated on cheap housing and flexible work spaces will be forced out. It has happened everywhere else in the world, and now that Vancouver is "world class", no doubt it will occur here as well. This may to some degree be the reason there are so many more artists this year, likely some of them have had to sublease their studios just to make ends meet.

The life of an artist is tough, and while I could think of many tougher places to take up painting for a living, the combination of a largely uneducated and indifferent public and by implication the ensuing government does not make it any easier. Democracy in action. There are lots of things stacked up against artists , and perhaps it might be argued that this is the same in every profession and artists should not have any special treatment because of it; social Darwinism in action. I tend to think that public money should go to the arts, since I am not convinced that the market place is an accurate or even appropriate judge of what is best in art. However, I'm not convinced that the way money is distributed in the arts is particularly fair or reasonable or even efficient. Leaving it to bureaucrats will tend to favour very safe, conservative and risk-free art - nothing innovative or significant has ever been done by bureaucracy. Leaving it to artists will tend to favour experimental and fringe art, not very accessible by the very people who are paying for it. A happy middle ground might be art which is accessible, being mostly representational, but also "out there." Salvador Dali comes to mind, as do many of the symbolist painters. Not surprisingly they tend to do quite well. Also not surprisingly, they know how to paint, by which I mean it is representational, and they either had long schooling and years of training, or grew up in an art filled environment and learned the craft by osmosis (or both).

I know from experience that it is very difficult to live an artistic life, and rather expensive if that is the exclusive way of paying the bills. All of the successful artists I know, mostly writers, painters and musicians, are either independently wealthy, or have "a day job." Having said that, the quality of life of an artist, once everything is going well, is really second to none. The work is satisfying and meaningful, people are usually very complementary, and the sense of satisfaction is wonderful. It's just a shame that we live in such a dumbed down environment that has little value for art or anything that is remotely artistic, creative or original.

Event: Patty Ampleford painting demonstration
Date: October 18th, 2009.
Venue: Hycroft, Shaughnessy, Vancouver.






"My, that is a lot of paint" I said, somewhat taken aback.
I was at a painting demonstration and the painter, Patty Ampleford, had just squished out an entire 200ml tube of oil paint onto her palette. She proceeded to do the same with a half dozen other colours. On these large mounds of paint, she squirted walnut oil out of a squeeze bottle, and attacked the canvas.
"Don't you worry that it will dry out?" I asked.
"That hardly ever happens," she said. "I'm always painting."

I am always impressed by people that can paint quickly - it takes me ages to finish a painting, and even after I'm done I'm always tempted to make revisions. This is a very different type of painting from the traditional portrait style that I tend to gravitate to, and even though she would stop painting and take questions from the audience, I would say that she was probably more than 80% finished by the time the two hour presentation was over. I couldn't help thinking that this was probably how Van Gogh painted. Towards the end of his life, he was putting out paintings at the rate of better than one a day. Patty Ampleford can certainly apply a lot of paint quickly, and the influence of the Group of Seven is quite obvious in her work, both in the subject matter and the technique. She works exclusively from rough sketches or plein air, and the speed at which she applies the paint belies the fact that she has an excellent eye for perspective and colour. Another interesting detail I noticed was that she exclusively used Escoda brushes, which really are an excellent brush, but more surprising was that she used the Chungking classical white filbert bristle brushes, all of them in quite wide sizes, and all with handles that are almost two feet long. This is really quite excellent because it's exactly the way painters used to paint 100 years ago. These days most art stores carry relatively short brushes, but pictures and paintings of the Impressionists and even Valasquez and Goya painting show enormously long handles.
This is extremely useful since it facilitates painting at high speed without having to continuously stand back to see the results - the default stance is already far back enough that the entire painting is continuously being evaluated. I know from experience that when doing detail work the tendency is always to get too engrossed in the details and overwork an area which then has to be un-worked once a step back is taken.

She does not use turpentine due to health reasons, and uses walnut oil exclusively as her medium. She uses the water soluable Windsor Newton brush cleaner.

Someone was indiscreet enough to ask how much the painting she was working on would be worth. For this size, $1800 was the answer.



Patty uses conventional off the shelf canvases, double primed, and puts on a thin glaze of colour, in this case a light magenta, since she doesn't like starting out with a white canvas. Once this is dry, she quickly sketches in the main elements of the composition with a smaller brush, and then proceeds to apply large dabs of paint to flesh out the landscape. She always paints the sky last because she likes the brushwork associated with painting around trees and mountains. She works exclusively wet on wet, but at this speed that is more a necessity than a choice. At one point while painting, a gob of white paint fell off her brush and fell into the green field of grass below. Unfazed, she grabbed another brush loaded with the same green paint, picked up the white dab, and continued with the sky. "Happy accident," she said.

She is currently represented by Ian Tan Gallery.

Event: World Premiere of Sir John Tavener's Miroir de Poèmes
Date: Oct. 10th, 2009
Venue: Chan Centre for the Performing Arts


"People do not buy art in Vancouver"
-Andy Warhol

Going to a premiere performance of a new work by such a famous and important contemporary composer right here in little 'ol Vancouver is such a rare and amazing opportunity that I arrived early expecting mongol hordes, especially considering the publicity on the radio and the full page interview in the entertainment section of the Vancouver Sun newspaper . I was a bit surprised to discover just a few people lingering around the concessions. At curtain, the theatre was less than a quarter full, which is really too bad and is a sad comment on the relative sophistication of Vancouver audiences. As a friend of mine is too fond of saying, "this is a lumberjack town: treat it like a cat treats a litter box. Do your business and leave." By leave, he means return to Europe. I disagree with him. While certainly the level of cultural refinement and development is a fraction of what one would find in a major European capital, there is enough going on that one can be very comfortable here, have world class everything, with the added bonus of clean air, clean water, and amazing scenery. Are there more barbarians here than in Europe? Perhaps, but it is possible to avoid having to interact with them. There is nothing which prevents anyone from associating exclusively with painters, poets, scientists and musicians and studiously avoiding the madding crowd of sports fans, bureaucrats, politicians and criminals. But let's talk about this work:

Sir John Tavener was commissioned by the Vancouver Chamber Choir to create this piece in recognition of the Choir's 40th year which is coming up in 2010. The work consists of a cycle of 22 poems by Jean Biès set to music for double choir, two string quartets and double bass. The two string quartets involved were the Lafayette and Borealis, who performed brilliantly. I was sitting close enough that I wondered about the instruments the Borealis quartet were playing . The rich patina caught the light in a diffused alizarin orange glow, and sure enough, the program mentions that they are all 17th and 18th century instruments from Cremona. The excellent acoustics of the Chan really brought out the decadent warmth of these instruments.

I will let Sir John describe his work:


In the Middle Ages, the title 'Miroir' designated works that reflected the traditional sciences - the science of love, the philosophical, the mystical, all indeed that is archetypal in our lives. Jean Biès is predominantly a poet, but also a perennial philosopher in the next generation on from Guènon and Schuon. I was drawn to the wonderfully rich tapestry that Biès's poetry embraces, from the mystical to the erotic, to the child-like and the playful, and to the immense profundity of his thinking.

A playful Petite ouverture 'draws back the curtain' on each sequence of the music as it moves in and out of different emotional worlds. India has always been seen by Biès as symbolic of a sacredness that has deserted the West, so this Petite ouverture is based on Indian Ragas, and should be sung in Indian style.

The cycle itself beings and ends with Promenade, 'a walk' in spring with all that 'spring' and 'walking' symbolize. After the first Promenade, we proceed into the world of erotic love, and then by way of an instrumental Interlude into a section with haiku-like miniatures. Then, following Interlude II, we reach the metaphysical and mystical centre of the piece with Androcosme, Mise en croise, and a setting of the extraordinary poem Tu ne sais pas. A third interlude takes us back through further miniatures and Interlude IV into the erotic landscape of the beginning. Thus Miroir de Poèmes is a structure, and also an inner mirror of the human condition, but seen always as a scared mirror. For Biès, as for myself all is sacred.

The music is very modern, and highly complex in many places, using such special effects as dis-phasing the choir - having one half of the choir sing something which might be a fraction of a second behind the other half - very difficult to pull off, but very effective when it is successfully executed, and the Vancouver Chamber Choir really outdid themselves in that respect. Everything was pitch perfect and crisp, and I'm looking forward to hearing the CBC rebroadcast of the concert.

The Haiku-like miniatures Sir John mentions were brilliant.

The setting of the poem Tu ne sais pas was certainly a highlight, and as I was following the work in my program, it occured to me that this poetry sounded familiar, yet up till that night I had never read anything by Jean Biès.

I'll quote the poem Apophatisme in English (the concert was sung in French) because I want to compare it with another English poem:

Gaze without eyes, word without voice.
Breath without air, a smile without lips.
Seed without sex, gesture without hands.
Scent without a flower, honey without bees.
Dark without night, sun without sky.,
Song without words, flight without wings.
A name without a person, thought without me.
Love without a heart, wine without a vineyard.
A point without space, time without duration.
End without death, beginning without end.

This all sounded really familiar, and as I was walking back to the car it occurred to me what this reminded me of:

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

It's from T.S. Elliot's The Hollow Men (here is Marlon Brando doing a reading of this poem) . I suppose that it could be argued that to move away from Western religion and start thinking of the world in a non-dualistic way requires this juxtaposition of paradoxes. It might very well be just a passing resemblance, and certainly the title of the poem, Aphothatism, (the belief that God cannot be known and can only be described by what God is not) is a clue.

Quand s' élève leur supplication, sai-Tu
que ceux qui Te supplient d'apparaître sont Toi ...?

(When their prayers rise up, do You know
that those who are praying for You to appear are ... You? )

Isn't this similar to:

Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

from The Hollow Men? I'm probably reading too much into this.

The second half of the concert was dedicated to a work by Canadian composer Peter Berring who received his BA in music from UBC, so this work has a certain terroir quality to it in terms of provenance, if not in subject matter. The work consists of a musical setting with narration of a Tolkienesque medieval Viking epic poem about the fourth century escapades of a Maiden Warrior who has to capture a magical sword guarded by ghosts. It was pleasant enough and had its moments, but it was dwarfed by the grandness of the previous work, despite the fact that it was performed wonderfully by the choir.

Event: In the Wings
Date: Oct.23, 2009
Venue: Daniels Recital Hall, Seattle, WA

Deborah Henson-Conant's work in progress was work-shopped in this world premier, and it always amazes me that there are so few people that come to these events. Here is a short video preview. The theatre seats 1200 and there were not many more than 100 people there. Deborah is a huge talent, and I've had the pleasure of seeing many of her concerts and spending time talking with her at various conferences and workshops. Lori and I even did an impromptu stint selling her CD's and working her sound system once at a concert in Topanga Canyon.

I've always had a problem with the "strap-on" harp; mostly from an aesthetic perspective. I can surely see the limitations of playing an instrument as static as the harp, despite the fact that she has revolutionized the harp world with her jazzy dance numbers while standing behind the instrument - traditionally harpists sat demurely behind their harps. I know I wish I could play the piano while having all the wild moves of musicians playing the electric guitar. However, I don't believe the answer is making a strap on piano, but rather adopting a playing technique like Jerry Lee Lewis. I saw Jerry Lee Lewis live many years ago, and despite the fact that he must have been in his 70's , he still had that jack-hammer technique which characterises his playing. As a pianist, it was exhausting just watching the way he played. Having said that, it would also be handy to have a series of disposable pianos since Mr. Lewis pretty much destroys any instrument he touches.

My problem with the strap on, however, is not with the idea of getting the harpist out from behind the back of the instrument, but rather the inevitable subconscious associations with other lurid paraphernalia. Personally, I can't help thinking of ancient Greek satyrs and their perpetually engorged members, but that's my reference. More lurid minds might have other associations involving ladies of the Sapphic persuasion.

Aesthetic considerations aside, the show was enjoyable, if somewhat disjointed and difficult to follow at times. It is a work in progress, and no doubt much re-writing will have to take place before it can be considered finished.

The main reason for going was that my good friend Janelle was in it, and was actually the second most important character in the story. She actually upstaged Deborah a couple of times, ironically by just being herself. I say ironic because Deborah is a larger than life personality, and she was not really acting here either.


Before the concert I walked around Pioneer square and had dinner there. Right on the corner is a fabulous bookstore that I would love to have lingered in - it is exactly what a bookstore should be, quirky, in an old building with squeaky wooden floors. Downstairs is a lounging area for reading, with a coffee and deserts, and just as I was leaving they were having a reading by an author. If only any store in Vancouver could do this and compete with Chapters. I was there probably less than 1/2 an hour, but this has now become my favorite bookstore in North America.
Seattle is a great town and I have to make a point of visiting more often.

Event: Madelaine Wood Painting Demonstration
Venue: Opus Framing, Granville Island
Date: Oct. 24, 2009


In my never ending quest to become a better painter, or at the very least define my own style, I have decided to see close up as many painters actually painting as possible. Right now I am rather smitten with Sorolla, and find myself more and more concentrating on the effects of light on the subject. Sorolla seems to have had some very hard and fast rules regarding this: anything which was in a shadow was less than middle grey value, everything that was in direct light was always painted in greater than middle grey value. While this may seem obvious, it is not exactly universally applied. In a recent walk along "Gallery Row" on Granville St., the few representational paintings in galleries which I saw did not subscribe to this concept consistently. This may seem like an old-fashioned idea, but I am going to strive to ensure that all my paintings in the future adhere to this rule, and not just by accident. Flipping though several of my canvases, I notice that I naturally seem to do this, but not always, and in those cases I see now that the colour is too vivid. This is especially tricky where there are bright coloured objects far in the background but in broad daylight. DaVinci would have painted as if there were a veil of smoke between the object and the viewer. Sorolla very cleverly achieves the effect of distance by carefully controlling the tone of objects in that background, but still preserving the luminosity which his paintings are famous for.

This afternoon I sat in on a painting demonstration by Madelaine Wood. I first encountered her paintings at Ian Tan's gallery on Granville, where she had an exhibition of paintings of unmade beds. I quite enjoyed it. She was working on a painting of a detailed closeup of some arbutus tree bark. In general, she tends to look at things on a micro, rather than a macro level, and she mentioned that it was likely due to the fact that as a child she had really bad eyesight. Most of her paintings have a wonderful brightness and fresh quality to them. Really quite beautiful; she obviously knows what she's doing. It was reassuring that many of the processes and techniques which she uses are second nature to me as well: painting on a non-white canvas: she prefers Sap Green as a ground, I almost always use Burnt Umber, but that is something which I probably read or saw somewhere (Cennini? Zurbarán? Vasari?), so I should probably re-evaluate that as well. Apparently it is not that critical. Legend has it that El Greco used left over paint from his last palette.

Madelaine paints exclusively in oils, and apparently almost exclusively from photographs. Members of the audience questioned her about that - there still seems to be a bit of suspicion when photography and painting are mentioned in the same sentence. Artists like Virgil Elliott seem to be categorically opposed to the practice. My own opinion is somewhat like Elliotts, that painting photographs is wrong on very many levels, but I disagree with him on the use of photography - so long as one has trained the eye to see the difference between a photograph and reality, then photographs, most especially digital photographs, are a wonderful tool. To people like Elliott, I would just ask "what has more information, a dozen digital photographs or a quick pencil sketch?" Ten megapixels don't lie, and while sketching does have the advantage that it forces an intimacy with the subject, it simply is not possible to include as much information as a photograph. Consequently I end up taking lots of pictures AND making a sketch, which I subsequently usually don't ever look at again.

I had a brief talk with her regarding Gamblin products, and she is also quite impressed with their quality. I am particularly happy with the Gamblin Ground for Oil Painting and I think that is pretty much going to be my standard issue canvas prep from now on. I took a canvas apart recently as an experiment, and was rather shocked to discover that I could peel the entire coat of oil paint off the acrylic "gesso" ground quite cleanly. I always suspected that the interaction between acrylics and oils might lead to problems, but this only confirmed my worst fears. In the future I plan on stretching my own canvas (or linen) on frames and hammering the whole thing together with solid copper tacks. If I'm going to put huge hours into something, I don't want it to be on some mass-produced, made in China, stapled, off the shelf canvas. Those might be alright for quick exercises because they are so inexpensive, but realistically if I'm spending hundreds of hours on a painting, I want everything on it to be the best I can make it.



Madelaine was very generous with her advice, and she is a very lovely and gracious person. I really enjoyed my time with her, and wish I didn't have to rush off at the end, but there was a literary event I had tickets for - part of the Writer's Festival now on at Granville Island.

Event: Vancouver Film Festival
Date: Oct. 14, 2009
Location: Granville 7


Another movie I saw at the festival was the Spanish film "Camino" (Spain, 2008). To say that the film was disturbing is rather an understatement. The claustrophobic potency is overwhelming in the extreme, and to say that there was not a dry eye in the house would not be an exaggeration. The theatre was quite full, and as the last scenes unfolded, there was an audible gasp from the audience. I lingered beside the door as people were leaving and it was obvious that most people had been crying or were visibly disturbed.

The synopsis of the movie is as follows:

Camino (Nerea Camacho) is a bouncy 11 year old girl whose happy, God-focused life in Madrid is spent between her religious school and a home dominated by her pious but authoritarian mother, Gloria (Carme Elias). Her family are members of Opus Dei, the controversial Catholic organisation founded by Spain's recently-canonised Jose Maria Escriva. Camino falls in platonic love with Cuco (Lucas Manzano) at a school theatre group. But young love is thwarted when the back pains that have been troubling her turn out to have a serious origin - and she is forced to undergo a barrage of tests, operations and radiation therapy sessions that eventually leave her bedridden, immobilised and blind. Camino's older sister Nuria (Velles), meanwhile, is living as a novitiate in an Opus Dei house. Only Camino's father, Jose (Mariano Venancio), gives her pure affection untainted by religious dogma.


Needless to say, this movie has caused a great deal of controversy, not least of which is for the fact that the movie is based on a true story, and that the protagonist of the film is being considered for sainthood. Graphic scenes of surgery interspersed with big budget CGI dream sequences make much of the film riveting and at times too powerful and intense for comfort.
The truly amazing thing about the movie is that it is presented in a very credible and real way - none of the acting is over-the-top, and while cultural differences might make some North American viewers wonder at the religious devotion many of the characters portray, I can attest from personal experience that this is all very, very real and not the slightest bit exaggerated. And there lies the films most disturbing quality, at least for me: there are no villains in this movie, everyone is doing and acting in what they believe is what God wants, and the results are so devastatingly cruel and horrible. While I did not see anyone actually walk out of the theatre, so intense was the production, I can also attest that many were squirming in their seats. This is a very difficult movie to sit through, and well deserves the 6 Goya awards (the Spanish equivalent of the Oscar).

A bit of trivia: The name of the protagonist is "Camino",(Spanish for "way"),but it is also the title of the foundational book of Opus Dei (the religious institution portrayed in the film), written in 1934 by the recently canonized Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer.

If you go to the IMDB site and read viewers comments on the film, it is quite remarkable that the majority didn't "get it" - the film is clearly showing how evil religion, or even the belief in God is. Yet most only attribute it to the protagonists following of the Opus Dei strain of the Christian virus. To all of those people, I would just like to point out a very singular and important element which seems to have gone unnoticed, despite the fact that it is repeated several times, and that is the character of Mr. Meebles. When Camino chooses a children’s book called Mr Meebles, her mother insists on buying one about Saint Bernadette. Mr. Meebles makes several appearances in dream sequences throughout the movie, but he often repeats the same thing: that he is capable of doing anything and everything, but that he has one problem. In his last appearance, he admits his problem, that he doesn't exist. Our character discovers this on a dream sequence where she is on stage, and the audience bursts out in hysterical laughter. A cruel trick indeed...

Here is a link to the trailers for the film.

Event: Vancouver Film Festival

Date: Oct. 12, 2009

Location: Granville 7

I saw many movies during the Vancouver Film Festival, many of them good, some excellent, others not so much. One that really stood out for me was Nomad's Land, a film by Gaël Métroz. Here is a short review by Judy Bloch:

One thinks that one is going to make a journey, yet soon it is the journey that makes or unmakes you,” Nicolas Bouvier (1929–1998) wrote in The Way of the World (L’usage du monde). Steeped in the writings of this Swiss traveler/philosopher—admittedly, in his thrall—filmmaker Gaël Métroz sets out to follow the road Bouvier traveled in 1953 in his iconic Fiat Topolino: from Yugoslavia, through Turkey, to Iran, then Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Whereas Bouvier had Thierry Vernet as a companion, Métroz is alone, at once author and observer, subject and object of his own journey. But time has marched forward (urbanization) and backward (politicized tribal violence, Taliban in the streets), and the East is unrecognizable as the world Bouvier described. So Métroz leaves the Topolino’s path for the hinterlands, trades car for camel, wine for opium, inns for yurts, peripatetic freedom for wheat gathering in deep valleys and sheep herding in mountains locked in snow until spring, philosophical musings for the hard work of “starting my life over.” Befriended by womenfolk he dare not smile at; living alongside the oppressed Kalesh, persecuted for “believing in this world, not the next”; lost in the desert and rescued by “untouchables”—at each turn Métroz finds, “I’d forgotten I wasn’t born here.” So, in spite of himself, he emulates the transformations of Nicolas Bouvier, who said, “If one does not accord the journey the right to destroy us a little bit, one might as well stay at home.”

I couldn't agree more. When I travel I tend to avoid all the obvious places and favour the obscure and the remote. While the protagonist in this film narrowly escapes dying in the desert and travels through some places which could only be described as hellish, such as his encounter with the Taliban, there are many other places which are of such sublime beauty that one could well wonder if they are even on earth. Many scenes reminded me of my visit with the nomadic Kurds who live on the slopes of Mt. Ararat.

Here is a brief trailer for the film.