INTERVIEW WITH VAHÉ BABAIAN

I came to the United States in 1976 via Iran and Lebanon, because my parents wanted me and my sister to have more opportunity and freedom. As an Armenian, we've been wanderers for a long time.

Growing up in Iran, I knew I wasn't going to stay there. I assumed I'd end up in America, because I'd grown up with so much American culture--music and so on.

My father worked for BOAC, the British airway, and he was always telling us about American things.

In 1974, we had to go to Lebanon to clear my father's paperwork to come to America. We thought we'd be there for two or three months, but a civil war was just breaking out. It became a two to three year nightmare. When I was 14 or 15, I saw a group of soldiers put a gun to my dad's head because they didn't know if he was Christian or Moslem. Even though we were Christians, we had to prove it. When they saw my dad's passport, they asked how could we be Christian? He had to explain we were Armenian. That 15 seconds that they had him in another room will never leave me.

For four months, to survive, we literally ate nothing but beans and rice. So when I got to America and saw the food people threw out in the school cafeteria, I realized I had to say something, I had to communicate.

My dad thought we'd get right out of Lebanon to America, but when he saw how long it took, I'm sure he asked himself if he'd done the right thing by taking us there. He used to walk around all night, watching us with a flashlight to make sure everything was okay. He slept a few hours in the morning. I wonder if he thought he'd made a mistake.

So, with all the sacrifices my father made, I figured I had to be somebody when I got here. Did I come to the U.S. just to eat better, just to not take a bullet? If I didn't say something when I was here, then I would fail my father and his sacrifice.

We spent all his retirement money--the money we thought we'd use in America--in Lebanon, so when we got to the U.S., we had nothing--maybe $500 altogether. We had an address in Glendale, and a nice family took us in. Four of us, four of them. Eight of us living in a two-bedroom apartment. Because he knew English, he thought he could get a job here. That's when the insults started. Because of his age, he could only get odd jobs--laying carpet and things like that. He never complained in my presence, but I knew he was hurting. He was not a man who would express himself freely. My cousin later told me, after my dad died, that he had revealed how much it hurt him that he couldn't help me with my college tuition.

I had always wanted to make films, but I didn't really know what that meant. Once I got to the U.S., I figured I'd just do it--even though I didn't know what to do. I had to express myself. I wanted to learn how to put my experiences into film and express them.

I researched film schools, and Art Center College of Design in Pasadena sounded good. My dad only had small odd jobs, and my mom got up at 4AM to go downtown to sew. I watched my mom and dad in their 50s doing jobs that 20s-people were doing. So, of course, I couldn't ask them for money. I worked my way through school--had a fulltime job and fulltime school program at the same time.

My dad died right after I graduated. He never saw my work, even though he worked on my films on the weekends.

I took the money I had saved for my films and spent it on his funeral. I was lost for a little while, but I got it together pretty quickly and found a way to finish my work. But I did feel my dad went just a little too early.

Now, I've made AFTER FREEDOM. I don't want to make the regular clichéd "immigrant" film. What's important to me is I'm trying to portray what happens when a person thinks he's missed the boat. What happens after you get what you think you want? With AFTER FREEDOM, I have the chance to show, in an honest way, what I've seen in America--portraying people that haven't been portrayed before, a neighborhood that hasn't been seen, a way of life that hasn't been shown.

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