This is another exciting project we’ve been working on recently, and finally it’s time for revealing it.

The Berd Bear project is one of the activities implemented by the Berd Women’s Resource Center Foundation, and is intended to provide much needed employment for the women of Berd and the surrounding villages. Our studio made a short promotional film for this initiative.

The project is about creating high quality, one-of-a-kind hand-made teddy bears. They’re so great that I’m sure everyone would love to have one.

And you have a chance to do that today by supporting this project on Kickstarter. Here are some reasons to do that from the description on Kickstarter;

Each bear takes over 20 hours to make, is 100% handmade, and no two are the same. They also measure a substantial 15 inches (38 centimeters) tall, and the joints rotate a full 360 degrees for unconstrained imagination.  Old world meets new.  No photo introduction can adequately recreate the smiles that meet these bears in person, but to get an idea.

There are a million reasons to want a teddy bear – it’s one of the few timeless, ageless and borderless things left in the world.  For such a memorable object, why not adopt/give something with a story behind it, handmade and uniquely reflecting the bear’s owner; a mini-treasure that will always evoke smiles and fond memories of the person who gave it or the sort of world you believe in.

What else? Watch the film and go straight to the Kickstarter project page!

As I mentioned a week ago, one of our recent projects, I Volunteer, a social advertisement for Armenian Volunteer Corps, is now ready and available for watching, both in English and Armenian. It’s been a fun project, thanks to all the crew, both from Manana Films and invited.

Our special thanks to Wild Child band for the nice soundtrack. The composition is called Pillow Talk, and overall they’re great musicians, I recommend checking out their works.

And if you have missed our very short making-of video, make sure to have a look, too.

I Volunteer (English version)

The first quarter of 2012 turned out to be extremely busy for us; we’ve been speeding through projects so intensively that nobody manages to update the website regularly. Among all the other exciting stuff we’ve been working on since January – preparations of Hit The Road, shootings of another feature-length documentary in very-very distant villages in Armenia (can’t share much information about it yet, sorry), a couple of short videos and films (also to be announced soon), we’ve also been working on a new social ad for Armenian Volunteer Corps.

The task was to demonstrate the importance of volunteering in general, in the meantime to show that it usually doesn’t require huge efforts or sacrifices.

It took a week of development and pre-production, 2 shooting days, 6 locations, week of post-production. The advertisement will be online in a few days both in Armenian and in English, meanwhile you can watch a very short video from the working process of the spot. Not that it’s very informative, but we really enjoy doing behind-the-scenes shootings every now and then, whenever we have time for it, it’s usually so much fun.

Enjoy it while we’re in Gumri for 11 days already for other shootings.

Finally, the short film we made for Children of Armenia Fund in the end of last year, is now online.

Glimpse of Tomorrow was made by our studio on request of COAF, to be screened during Children of Armenia Fund Holiday Gala, which took place on December 15, 2011 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The purpose of the film was to illustrate the importance of COAF’s activities in Armenia and to encourage future donations. The concept, story, production and post-production were entirely made by Manana Films. Special thanks to COAF’s team from Yerevan and New York offices for all the support during the process. Watch the film here.

As about the result – the film helped to raise $1,4 million in one night, which will be spent on all the great projects of COAF. Mission accomplished.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, we are developing several big projects for this year, and we can unveil one of them already.

Hit The Road: India is a feature-length documentary project about a two man team participating in a fourteen day race across India, known as the Rickshaw Challenge. The race starts in Chennai, and in two weeks the teams will cross the whole country to reach Mumbai.

Hit The Road will show the team going through breathtaking adventures and dangerous obstacles to win the race. Manana Films employs the most advanced filmmaking technologies to realize this large-scale project and bring you an engaging and entertaining film.

The project is being developed entirely by our studio and our good friend and a crazy  adventure-seeker Ric Gazarian from Chicago, who’s doing everything on his side to make the project come true. We’ve been intensively working on this for 6-7 months already, planning the shootings, designing logistics, exploring the locations (distantly, of course), processing huge amount of information about different parts of India daily, and involving more and more people; still there is a lot to do before the actual shootings start, but it’s already clear that Hit The Road: India is going to be one of the biggest and craziest projects we’ve ever worked on.

There is a separate website for this project that you can have a look at; it’s being updated and changed almost every day, there’s more and more interesting stuff coming up, so make sure to check it from time to time if you’re interested.

Like I said, time to blow some socks off, you know!

What’s up? Yes, we haven’t updated our website with the recent news this month, but it doesn’t mean I have nothing to share with you today.

We’ve been really busy from the very beginning of the year; like I predicted, 2012 is going to be insane (well, what else did you expect me to predict?), and we’re already scheduling the galaxy invasion the upcoming cool projects.

Concerning the current projects; Neither-Nor has gone through intense post-production in Framestore (for those who haven’t heard of them; Framestore is the biggest post-production company in Europe, which is working on high-end commercials and movies, and has done visual effects for films such as all episodes of Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes 1 and 2, Avatar, Prince of Persia, etc), and now we’re finishing the sound design. Hopefully, you can see the film online this month.

Besides that, there are two very exciting feature-length films that our studio is developing. Both of them require tremendous amount of organizational work, especially the one that we will produce in Summer – we’ll announce that project later this month, I’m sure a lot of people will like it. It’s way up to the next level from what our studio has done so far (and way forward from what many other studios have done, too, to be honest); it’s really big, there’s a lot of people involved, it will be filmed in the craziest locations, and we’re spending hours every day designing the logistics. It will blow your socks off. I mean, really, it will blow them off, just like that. It happens to me every day, whenever we start working on it – bam, socks off!

Ok, I’m getting too excited, time to stop. Where are my pills?

Yes, 2011 really has been a good year. A busy and a crazy one for us. We released Neighbors, a colorful feature-length documentary about funny and tragic life of people living on Armenian-Turkish border, we produced our first social advertisement series, Projections, we made Glimpse of Tomorrow (will be online in the beginning of next year), a short documentary for Children of Armenia Fund. We had 18 international awards and nominations in film festivals and competitions all around the world during this year.

Besides the officially released stuff, we worked on three other feature-length films (coming next year) and two short fiction films that will be finished in 2012, and we have a few projects in pre-production, including crazily ambitious and epic projects. One of them is on my table right now, we’ve been planning and designing the logistics for it since October, and still there’s a lot to do before we can start the actual shootings. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but it’s going to be massive.

Yes, it’s been a good year. We worked hard, we never stopped, but judging by our plans for 2012, something tells me 2011 will seem a childish game to us by the end of the next year.

Thanks to everybody who has been with us during the year, working, helping or just following our activities. Let’s keep having fun.

Happy New Year!

It’s been such a busy couple of months that the good news were left without attention, so here is a quick update; Moving a Mountain won two awards in Los Angeles New Wave International Film Festival – Best Editing Award and 2nd place in Short Documentary category.

Best Editing is probably the most exciting award for me as the author of the film. Although Moving a Mountain has been nominated or awarded in 8 different film festivals already (including Best Documentary Film Award), it’s really interesting to win an award for some specific aspect of the film. Especially when it comes to the editing, because in Moving a Mountain we were experimenting with my personally favorite style of cutting; sharp, fast, without soft edges or stupid transitions, but very neat at the same time. This style was mostly inspired by the type of the work that Asheer (the main character) was doing in the film – cutting, grinding and burning big pieces of metal is a kind of a work that just dictates the rhythm and style of the film. That is why I was really happy to hear that the jury liked it, too.

Ok, too much details, sorry! Check back for more news from our new projects soon.

News from festivals are more than we can handle recently; after trying to find an empty space for certificates from Popok Advertising Festival for Projections and Patras City Film Festival for Moving a Mountain (we stopped hanging them on the wall since 2009), Mathias Fritsche from Edition Caspera sent us good news from Film Festival Cottbus, Germany, where Neighbors’ premiere screening for German-speaking countries was taking place.

Seems like both screenings during the festival went excellent; a lot of people arrived at night from different cities of Germany to attend the screening of the film.

Neighbors is just starting its long and interesting trip through different festivals and countries. It’s always an interesting feeling, when the film starts living its own independent life (wipes off a tear), and you just follow how it grows bigger, and you’re just there to follow from the far (another tear).

Ok, time to go back to work (waving a white jane-eyre-style handkerchief).

While Moushegh Baghdasaryan and me have spent almost the entire October working on a new co-production documentary with Anadolu Kultur in Mush, Turkey, Projections brought us good news for three different times; it got nominated in Thermaikos International Short Film Festival in Greece and Kinofest Digital Film Festival in Romania, and suddenly won Silver Award in Popok Advertising Festival. Unfortunately, neither Moushegh – the director, nor me didn’t manage to attend the ceremony because of filming in an earthquake and war zone still being in Turkey, but Lilit Karapetyan took the award instead of us.

Although our festival list for 2011 so far is not short, this award is especially important for us right now; Projections is the first advertisement project that Manana Films has designed, from script development till actual production and post-production. And although each part of Projections are good enough to compete in other festivals as short films, rather than ads, and they’ve been doing it in three different festivals already, however, a professional advertising award was much more important for us in this case. It means our first experience in this sphere was quite successful and it’s worth trying to go forward.

Once again, thanks to Shahkhatun NGO, the client organization for Projections, for the trust.