Documentary about Parkinson’s disease by Canadian Armenian filmmaker will be screened in Toronto

Documentary about Parkinson’s disease by Canadian Armenian filmmaker will be screened in Toronto –

23 Kilometres, a film by Canadian Armenian filmmaker Noura Kevorkian about Parkinson’s and aging that appeared in competitions in International festivals will have a special screening at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema in downtown Toronto on Thursday, December 15, at 6:30 pm.

 It is a beautiful and moving “experienTIAL” film about what it’s like to have Parkinson’s as seen through the eyes of the director’s father-a soulful man who suffered many years before succumbing to the disease.

 There will be Parkinson’s experts on hand to discuss the disease, and Noura will also be there to do a Q&A.

 Kevorkian’s film starts with home video footage of Barkev’s last conversation before Parkinson’s took his power of speech away and it will be the last dialogue in this 78-minute film. Typically, as we will realise, he talks about the stars and the planets and their meaning in his life. It will transpire that amateur cosmologist Barkev was born to survivors of the Armenian genocide who had fled to the Karatina Camp in Beirut for shelter. He grew up in a shanty house with a tin roof, looking through the holes to the stars.

 Canadian Armenian filmmaker Noura Kevorkian made her filmmaking debut with her first short documentary entitled VEILS UNCOVERED (Official Competition Amsterdam IDFA, Golden Sheaf Yorkton Film Festival) about lingerie and the veiled women of Damascus.

Noura’s feature debut ANJAR: FLOWERS, GOATS AND HEROES, is the historical documentary about a young girl growing up during the Lebanese Civil War who discovers that all the elders of her village are genocide survivors from World War I.

 Noura’s short film VEILS UNCOVERED along with images from the book she co-authored The Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie were exhibited in the renowned Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.