The Mitani project premiered their hourlong film at the Great Caesar Banquet Hall in Tujunga on April 21, where about a 150 community leaders and participants gathered to watch the film. The team stood on the stage where they spoke about the project. After their speech, famous duduk player Edgar Hakobyan performed three Armenian musical pieces. After the crowd had a chance to cheer him on, the screens on both sides of the hall began to play the documentary.

Halfway though the movie, dancer Diana Karapetyan performed in a cultural Armenian dance.  The team continued to play their movie after the performance to end with a great round of applause from the audience.

The applause was followed by an open mike where the parents of the team came up to congratulate them on their diligence and success. Emily Deravanessian, a middle school student in the crowd, told the audience how proud she was of her cousin Leona Abrahamian, one of the filmmakers.

The Mitani Project was set up by Clark alumnae Leona Abrahamian, Peter Kassabian and Ani Vardanyan. The name of the project takes the audience all the way back to the roots of the cause as Mitani was the first name for Armenia.

Their documentary is an accumulation of videos where leaders and youth from the Armenian community tell more about the significance of the Armenian race and explain what it truly means to be an Armenian. “The Mitani project showcases what we do and why we do it as a race,” Abrahamian said. The team’s goal is to raise awareness on how the Armenians have been able to regather after the genocide of 1915 and show their resilience as a people.

“A couple of months ago the idea just came to mind at night — it was very out of the blue — and as I thought, the first thing that came to mind was to post, ‘Who would be interested in being part of a project where we capture our strength as Armenians?’. After a few months, Vardanyan told her team about the Mitani project and luckily Abrahamian and Kassabian understood her idea and immediately began shooting.

The team shot in 13 locations, interviewed 80 participants and filmed for three months. They spent one restless week filming the participants. “We are running on six hours of sleep at the moment, but we are so excited and energetic that this is nothing,” Kassabian told the audience. “We have the world’s energy right now, knowing we are doing something especially very important,” Vardanyan said.

Many of the participants asked why these few Armenian college students decided to do the project and what it meant to them they responded in a very passionate way. “It just comes from the heart,” said Vardanyan.

Most of the project was shot in English, a choice which was constantly questioned by audience members. “A Lot of people have been asking me why is it in English, why not in Armenian?” Vardanyan said. “Armenians know who they are. I want the rest of the world to learn about us. That’s why we decided to shoot it in English, so everyone can learn about you, because a lot of people don’t really know who we are and what we are capable of.”  

“When people ask how do you do it? ‘You go to school, you work, you do all of that’, I thought about that. We are Armenians, so whenever someone says impossible I think possible and remember that if our ancestors could have walked thousands and thousands of miles and gone through the terrible atrocities they did, why can’t we do this, combining our passion alike and with who we are as individuals,” Abrahamian said. The project will continue over their Instagram, Facebook page and Youtube channel.