Lebanese filmmaker Tamara Stepanyan. Photo: Helle Nordberg/IMS

The move from fiction to documentary film-making was a soul-searching experience for charismatic Lebanese filmmaker Tamara Stepanyan, who spent five weeks in Denmark as part of IMS’ exchange programme for young Arab and Danish filmmakers   

By Helle Nordberg, IMS 

Her first film was about the fictional relationship between a father and a daughter characterised by love and tension. Fiction has been 27 year-old Tamara Stepanyan’s preferred genre since she graduated as a Communications Arts Major in 2005.

- Documentary filmmaking portrays reality. But I am scared of reality, it is tough. Fiction is easy to construct, and it is easier to channel strong emotions through characters in one’s films. In documentaries you have to deal with real characters and real emotions. I wanted to challenge my fear and this was my motivation for applying for IMS’ filmmaker exchange programme which focuses on documentary filmmaking, says Tamara Stepanyan in an interview with IMS.

Connecting Arab and Danish filmmakers

The purpose of the IMS exchange programme carried out in collaboration with the National Film School of Denmark, is to exchange knowledge and experience between visually talented, young documentary filmmakers from the Arab world and Iran. The current spring exchange programme includes six filmmakers from the Arab world and six from Denmark. Together they participate in a one-week course at the national Film School of Denmark together and then disburse to the countries in which they will be making a 20 – 28 minute documentary of their own choice. Read more about IMS' Twinning programme here.

Ten-hour working days

During a five-week stay in Copenhagen, Tamara and two fellow filmmakers went through an intense one-week training session with Arne Bro, Head of the Documentary and TV Department in the National Film School of Denmark. He took his students through a grueling 10 hour-a-day programme.

- It was emotional, intense and demanding, says Tamara Stepanyan. Arne Bro made us explore our filmic language and we worked from 9 – 22:00 every day. In the daytime he sent us on shooting assignments. We then went back to class to watch and analyse the product.

- It was a challenge working by oneself with the camera, with sound, photography and directing. I am used to only directing, she said.

In the night you are vulnerable  

As part of Arne Bro’s course, the young filmmakers were asked to make diaries from the house they shared every night on varying topics such as “lovers” or “a moment with your body”. Tamara’s late night diaries all filmed inside her room led to the idea for her documentary film.

- I had the beginnings of an idea before I arrived in Copenhagen, but the late-night diaries helped develop it. In the night you are naked, vulnerable, she says.

- My film is about identity. Originally from Armenia, I arrived in Lebanon when I was 12 and have lived there now for the last 15 years. For many, the concept of identity and belonging can be difficult. In my case, I have created a third identity for myself. With my film, I wanted to focus on dislocation, beautiful nostalgia, how your senses, smell and taste can remind you of past times, and a yearning for the past, she explains.

- I found four women in Copenhagen with completely different backgrounds and ages who have all come to Denmark for different reasons. One was a South African woman who fell in love and moved to Denmark, another from India who came for love. The third woman came to Denamrk as daughter of Iranian refugess and the fourth was adopted from South Korea. I placed them in my room and interviewed them one by one in the same spot in my room – which was my world - while in Denmark.

Now is my time

Tamara Stepanyan commends the IMS programme for providing the filmmakers with an opportunity to really learn and digest after having graduated. A course like this is much more useful when the students have some experience in life.

- This is my time. I am much more mature now than when I was in film school at 18 and that makes this a different experience, she says enthusiastically.

Tamara Stepanyan and her fellow Arab and Danish exchanged filmmakers will finalise their documentaries in the course of the spring.

Watch this space for Tamara Stepanyan’s film about identity.