'On the Old Roman Road by the renowned filmdirector Don Askarian will be broadcasted for the first time on free TV on 25 July 0:45 AM, WDR Germany.

The Dutch / German / Armenian coproduction 'On the Old Roman Road (An der alten römischen Straße) will be broadcasted for the first time on free TV on 25 July 0:45 AM, WDR Germany. This extraordinary film by the renowned director Don Askarian was already screened on important international festivals such as the Rotterdam Film Festival and the Taos Talking Picture Festival. In this e-mail you will find information about this unique project. Additional information can be found on www.don-askarian.am

The Dutch / German / Armenian coproduction 'On the Old Roman Road (An der alten römischen Straße) will be broadcasted for the first time on free TV on 25 July 0:45 AM, WDR Germany. This extraordinary film by the renowned director Don Askarian was already screened on important international festivals such as the Rotterdam Film Festival and the Taos Talking Picture Festival. In this e-mail you will find information about this unique project. Additional information can be found on www.don-askarian.am

We are still looking for possibilities to distribute the film internationally, for film as well as for television. Please let us know if you are interested.

For questions, interviews or pictures, please contact:

Laurens Runderkamp

Askarian Film

Niebuhrstr. 69

10269 Berlin

Germany

Tel. / Fax : +49 30 -- 324 6023

askarianfilm@web.de

www.don-askarian.am

The Director of Programming of Taos Talking Picture Festival Mr. Kelly Clement wrote about the film: "We are delighted that you have accepted our invitation to screen ON THE OLD ROMAN ROAD at the 2002 Taos Talking Picture Festival, April 11 - 14. Every year, we look at thousands of films and when one shines above the rest, as ON THE OLD ROMAN ROAD did, it is indeed a pleasure. Don Askarian, recently honored with a Harvard Film Archive retrospective, is considered the greatest living Armenian filmmaker. In Askarian's latest film, which he describes as a bloody comedy," a man in exile remembers a childhood of magic and mayhem, complete with grave robbers, brutal assassinations, horses, and men buried in hot ash. As striking a visual feast as one can find, this is an extravagant and crystalline treasure, a film whose rewards far outweigh its considerable demands".

ON THE OLD ROMAN ROAD, Synopsis by Harvard Film Archive

Germany/Armenia 2001, 35mm, color, 79 min.

English and Armenian with English subtitles
Askarians most recent project is another meditation on the artist in exile. Like the filmmaker Avetik and the real-life composer Komitas from his previous films, Levon--a writer of Armenian extraction now living in Rotterdam--is caught between memories of homeland and the realities of contemporary life. From his Dutch domicile, Levon reminisces about his brother-in-law (a hairdresser who robs dead Turks), a brilliant Kurdish musician, a red-bearded executioner, a seventeen-year-old girl with chestnut-colored skin, and a Turkish Apollo with eight wives who likes to bury himself in hot ash. His memory is also populated by beautiful thoroughbred horses, stray dogs, camel drivers, soldiers, and Turkish policemen. These poetic, almost surrealist scenes of magic love and political cruelty are contrasted with the reality of present-day Rotterdam, presented in the guise of a modern crime story with Armenian terrorists and a Kurdish tragedy.

Directors intentions (Don Askarian)
...Vano the carpet-seller in contemporary Rotterdam, starts his second, secret life, as a light-footed dead-angel for Turkish politicians. He is a charming terrorist, an outsider and successful lover. He prepares the liquidation of the Turkish consul in Rotterdam, and executes him. He lures him with the picture of the Turkish sultan Abdul Hamid 'The Bloody, which he has bought in the auction house Leo Jansen. There are secret connections between Vano and the old man of uptown Rotterdam, who presumably finances this terror-attack.

Also the Kurdish topic in the film has to be reinforced. So much pain and so much injustice done to the Kurds! A short and strong documentary will come out, showing people who burn, who set themselves on fire.

Dancing fire. Fire on living human beings. Indifference and complicity of the politics. The face of Ocalan, fully injected with medications, doesn't leave my memory. I would like to shoot the Dutch part of the film in 35 mm, in order to sense the difference between present and past also in picture-quality.