Eric Nazarian doesn’t simply make movies—he constructs areas for reality, ache, and therapeutic to collide, rising as pressing, unforgettable cinema. The Armenian-American screenwriter and director behind Tatanka, Die Like a Man, and Giants has lengthy been preoccupied with themes of trauma, resistance, and resilience. However his work isn’t confined to the display—it reverberates throughout communities, establishments, and generations.
Ache as Passport, Therapeutic as Function
“For me, ache and resilience is the passport to empathy,” Nazarian displays. “All nice drama has a component of ache that should be overcome, embraced, resisted or healed.”
That conviction runs by all his work, whether or not it’s exploring the reverberations of genocide, systemic violence, or cultural erasure. As a descendant of Armenian genocide survivors and a baby of Soviet repression, his connection to generational trauma is each lived and inherited.
“I’ve all the time craved tales… which have transcended hardship and struggling to seek out which means and catharsis,” he says, citing Blues music, Shakespeare, and Kurosawa in the identical breath. “That’s why I really like tales of resistance fighters who battled nice odds as a result of they believed in therapeutic and lightweight over ache and darkness.”
From Web page to Image: A Craft Solid in Fireplace
Nazarian is without doubt one of the uncommon auteurs who straddles the trials of screenwriting and the imaginative and prescient of directing with equal pressure. “Writing is the YIN and directing is the YANG. They full one another,” he explains. “The movie should be exploding in your thoughts’s eye as you learn a script.”
After incomes the Nicholl Fellowship for Giants, Nazarian tailored Three Christs for Jon Avnet—a harrowing and enlightening course of. “It was the toughest adaptation I’ve carried out and essentially the most informative to all of my different screenwriting,” he shares. His screenplays are crafted not simply to inform tales however to evoke cinema in its purest, most immersive kind.
“Cinema is simply too highly effective a medium with a lot untapped potential to be lowered to simply the idea of ‘storytelling,’” he emphasizes.
Cinema as Social Arsenal
In Die Like a Man, Nazarian took his mission additional, launching a grassroots filmmaking program for system-impacted communities. “The expertise taught me that our underrepresented communities are intrinsically linked to cinema by generations of watching movies and dreaming about them.”
By coaching contributors in every thing from casting to modifying, Nazarian constructed greater than a set—he constructed a proving floor for transformation. “My hope is for individuals viewing the movie and those that had been a part of the making see the potential of choosing up the film digital camera as an alternative of a gun,” he says. “And making movies that heal as an alternative of trigger ache.”
Past Borders, Past Identification
In Tatanka, Nazarian labored with the Oglala Lakota neighborhood to inform a deeply non secular story of survival and sacred connection. As an Armenian, he discovered kinship in shared histories of dispossession and resilience.
“After I was taking pictures Tatanka in Pine Ridge, I used to be deeply in a state of whole non secular reference to my beloved Oglala Lakota associates,” he shares. “That is the ability of being human.”
Nazarian is adamant that cultural storytelling, when carried out with accountability and love, transcends the boundaries of origin. “That’s the highest context of artwork for me—when an artist is so in tune with their humanity that they’ll transcend their very own cultural borders and make cinema that feels so genuine.”
Honored, However Not Completed
Not too long ago named one of many 100 changemakers of Los Angeles by the Alta: A Human Atlas challenge on the Getty, Nazarian stands alone as the one filmmaker on the checklist—and the one Armenian.
“I used to be deeply honored,” he says, “and can proceed to do all I can as a filmmaker to increase and deepen my work in telling human tales… that sincerely discover our trials, tribulations, and transcendences.”
Remodel internal depths
Eric Nazarian doesn’t make motion pictures. He strikes individuals. Via the lens of struggling, he reveals paths to salvation—one movie, one fellowship, one story at a time.
“Ache and therapeutic—it all the time comes again to that”. And for individuals who witness his work, it’s clear: from trauma to triumph, cinema is his sacred floor.