Actor, filmmaker Yervand Manarian dead at 95

English

Prominent Armenian actor Yervand Manarian has passed away aged 95.

Manarian was born in Arak, Iran in 1924 in a family from Agulis, Nakhichevan. In 1946 his family repatriated to Soviet Armenia along with thousands of other Iranian Armenians.

He studied at the Yerevan Institute of Fine Arts and Theater and graduated from the Faculty of Directing in 1952.

He worked as an actor and director at the Paronyan Musical Comedy Theater and the Sundukyan Theater in Yerevan. In 1957-1959 he was the principal director of the Puppet Theater after Hovhannes Tumanyan, and from 1988 he was the artistic director of the Agulis Puppet Theater Studio.

In 1959-1961 he held the same position at the Goris Theater, and since 2007 he is the founding-artistic director of the Armenian Puppet Theater in Kiev. Later he worked at Yerevan Documentary Film Studio and Yerevan Cinema. He was one of the directors of the Yerevan State Puppet Theater.

He produced a number of documentary and feature films, such as “Armenian Miniature”, “Michael Nalbandian”, “Kiosk”, “Light”, “The Birth of Drugs”, “The Summer Comes” and more.

He is best known for the roles in films such as “Bride from the North”, “Bride from Jermuk”, “Tzhvzik”, “Morgan’s Niece” and others.