Yerevan is hosting the Golden Apricot Film Festival from July 11 to 18, attracting international thespians, including Italian actor Claudia Cardinale (top), and directors, including American film maker Rob Nilsson (center). The festival will screen more than 125 films from more than 35 countries, including Iraq, Japan, Bosnia, United States, Venezuela and Iceland. Awards will be handed out best feature film, best documentary and best Armenian film, including “Dialogues” by director Gagik Ghazare (second from bottom).
Anahit Hayrapetyan is a freelance photojournalist based in Yerevan.
Legendary '70s rock band Deep Purple returned after 20 years to the Armenian capital of Yerevan to play a charity concert to help build a music school in the country. Fronted by vocalist Ian Gillan, the band first held a benefit concert in 1990 to help victims of the Spitak earthquake, which struck northern Armenia two years earlier.
On the evening of April 23, several thousand Armenians marched through the streets of Yerevan to the Tsitsarnakaberd Genocide Monument, carrying torches, flowers, candles and flags to commemorate the 1915 mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire.
The Yezidis, a Kurdish-dialect-speaking group who migrated to Armenia from Turkey starting in the late 1820s, are the country’s largest ethnic minority. Aside from their religious practices, which include elements of Christianity, Islam and Zoroastrianism, they are best known in Armenia for their sheep-breeding and production of sheep cheese and wool.
Yerevan’s $35 million, 1,100-square-meter Cafesjian Center for the Arts officially opened its doors on Nov. 7, 2009. The museum is part of a seven-year project by Armenian-American Gerard L.
