Terranea and the return home
The keys on my MacBook click in the quiet of my West Los Angeles apartment. I have not written an essay like this since the Palisades and Eaton fires. Nearly a year has passed without anchoring myself to a blank document. My instinct to record my thoughts had been buried under medical appointments, fatigue and the uncertainty of how much more treatment my body could tolerate. But tonight, after returning from Terranea in Rancho Palos Verdes, I felt something shift. The urge to write returned, memory pressed forward and the words began to gather.
The Sawtelle neighborhood outside my window looks modern, sharp and clean under bright, neon signage and the façade lighting designs dressing new housing and office buildings.
Just a few steps from my driveway is the parcel of land where KSCI Channel 18 once stood; its broadcast towers delivered the first-ever high-power television signal carrying our community’s faces and voices across Southern California decades ago.
KSCI had been the heart of ethnic broadcasting in Los Angeles. Dozens of communities bought airtime there. And for us, for Armenians scattered across this city, KSCI had been a lifeline.
Armenian Teletime aired on Saturdays. It was simple. A green curtain. A microphone. A cassette tape. And yet it was the only place where we saw our singers and our language on a screen. It was the only place where a boy like me could believe that Armenians existed in the wider world.
The KSCI complex, offices and studios are repurposed now. They’re the global headquarters of a new media company, where electronic arts and gaming software are birthed. Yet I can still feel the phantom hum of its old transmitters and microwave dishes.
What made me look toward KSCI tonight was the movie I streamed called A Winter’s Song, a film made by Armenian artists with tools we could not have imagined back then. The movie on Amazon Prime played feet away from the place where our earliest images once flew into analogue airwaves. Watching it felt like time folding in on itself. A full circle drawn slowly across four decades.
To understand why it affected me so deeply, I had to go back to my father’s Super 8 film camera. It lived in a brown case and smelled of new leather. I was not allowed to touch it. Film was expensive, and the device itself felt sacred. It was a symbol of a world where images mattered. Even as a child, I understood that recording anything was an act of privilege.
Healing power of the Pacific
My niece Ani had insisted on gifting me the resort stay, so we could celebrate the holiday together. She offered me a change of scenery before the next phase of my treatment. In Room 5124, I found the sacred space to steady myself between my last surgery a month ago and the beginning of another round of chemotherapy this week.
Those days by the water helped me rise above the fog that had wrapped itself around me for the previous six months. Stage IV colorectal cancer with liver metastasis rewired my life in ways I never imagined and pushed me to urge everyone I love to get screenings more often than doctors usually recommend.
Illness can reorder every priority with an immediacy that feels both violent and clarifying. The ocean gave me a few hours each day when my body felt less like a battlefield and more like a place I still recognized.
When I returned home on Sunday evening, I picked up the remote and pressed the Prime Video button to stream A Winter’s Song, the debut feature by Angela Asatrian, a young Armenian-American filmmaker whose name I had recently learned. Watching it during its streaming debut weekend felt like a small act of support for young Armenian artists, journalists and storytellers who are finally stepping into the creative space that had existed only in imagination when I was their age. Without realizing it, pressing play on that film would begin pulling decades of my life into a single thread.
Imagining a filmmaker before one existed
Seated at the keyboard of my first personal computer in February of 1991, I imagined a young Armenian-American filmmaker named Sev Minassian. He lived only in the pages of my fiction. In my short story, the Beautiful People, published in the Asbarez newspaper, Sev was the gifted outsider struggling to break into a Hollywood system that offered little room for newcomers. He was ambitious and imaginative, but the institutional framework around him was built to exclude anyone who did not fit the predetermined mold.
Like many artists from underrepresented communities, Armenian storytellers often found themselves excluded from mainstream media, broadcasting and Hollywood, systems that historically centered a narrow idea of who could tell stories and whose lives were worthy of being seen.
My story imagined Sev directing a visionary reinterpretation of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis with an Armenian executive producer named Siranoush. That choice was intentional. Using Armenian names in place of the ones we never saw onscreen was my quiet assertion that we too belonged in cinema, that we also had the right to be part of the media landscape, not just buried in the credits.
My story featured a fictional reporter named Michael, who chronicled Sev’s rise. He documented each rejection and each breakthrough, each closed door and each unexpected opportunity. He served as a witness to what persistence looks like inside a system that insists on silence from certain voices.
Back then, I believed that if Armenian storytellers with that kind of vision ever appeared in real life, Hollywood and the media world would not be ready.
The real Sev and a creative lineage
Decades later, Sev Ohanian arrived.
The film producer, screenwriter and fellow University of Southern California film school graduate has redefined modern storytelling in ways that felt uncannily similar to the imaginative range I once assigned to my fictional Sev. His feature film, Searching, earned praise for reinventing screen language in the digital age and was covered widely in the Los Angeles Times. Run brought him additional attention in Variety. His work as executive producer on Judas and the Black Messiah earned national recognition through The New York Times and NPR. His recent Sinners confirmed that he possessed the courage to experiment within genre while holding emotional truth at the center.
It was as if fiction had become prophecy.
But Sev Ohanian was only one part of a widening creative lineage. Musician, singer-songwriter and pop star Sebu Simonian is morphing Armenian folk into the mainstream. He’s channeling Komitas, the legendary Armenian composer who preserved the soul of Armenian music.
Like Sebu, singer Sirusho carried the sound of Komitas into modern composition. Her recording PreGomesh breathed new life into our ancient values, decoding our prophecies, while sampling Komitas’ voice. Artists like Sirusho, Sebu and Sev represented a generation who are carrying Armenian cultural memory not as nostalgia but as creative force.
Angela Asatrian now stands within a remarkable cohort of artists lifting Armenian voices and stories onto the global stage. Standing with Angela are Sev, Sebu, Sirusho and giants such as Atom Egoyan, Arsinee Khanjian, Steven Zaillian, Aram Tertzakian, Serj Tankian, Eric Nazarian, Miko Malkhasyan, Asko Akopyan, Arman Nshanian, Garin Hovannisian, Ani Hovannisian, Sevag Koundakjian, Berj Beramian, Armen Karaoghlanian and Alec Mouhibian. Collectively, they have broken through barriers, inspired young people and shaped Armenian narratives through independent and mainstream platforms. Their work marks a shift that once seemed impossible.
Before cameras were within reach
To understand how far our community has come, I had to return to a time when cameras were nearly impossible to access. In the analogue era, my alma mater kept equipment locked behind counters. Students needed a coveted admission, enrollment and identification to borrow cameras. Editing stations required clearance. Lighting kits sat untouched in storage rooms, available only to a select circle.
For young storytellers like me, the only accessible equipment came from public access cable studios in high school. Cable companies were required to offer these spaces in exchange for their monopoly of wiring cities and delivering channels like CNN and MTV and HBO into American homes. Fresno Cable’s community access Channel 14 became my first classroom. That was where I first held a studio camera. That was where the dream began to take shape.
Before video became common, Armenian documentarians like Seta Harboyan-Simonian and Hratch Simonian carried coil after coil of reel-to-reel tape recorders into churches to capture the voices of a community speaking to itself across generations.
Hratch and Seta recorded reel-to-reel tapes for Hamazkayin radio in church basements and school halls, and those recordings shaped the musical inheritance their son Sebu later carried forward. Their commitment to documenting the community gave him a lineage rooted in preservation.
Now, decades later, Seta and Hratch’s early acts of preservation have come full circle, woven into the stories we tell today and carried forward by new generations of artists.
The voices that formed my own
Representation grew slowly. When Stefani Booroojian appeared on Fresno television, she showed young Armenian children that their names could belong in American newsrooms. Filmmakers like Ara Madzounian, Vahe Babaian and Nigol Bezjian proved that Armenians had cinematic voices worthy of preservation. They worked with 16-millimeter film and improvised sets, shaping stories with limited tools yet boundless determination.
At USC, Carol Sobieski taught me the purpose of each word on a page. Sobieski was the acclaimed screenwriter behind movies like Annie and Fried Green Tomatoes. Her television credits included Peyton Place and Mission Impossible. She would call me ‘kiddo’ and showed me how every word must be intentional, purposeful, essential.
Novelist T. Coraghessan Boyle taught me rhythm, tone and the heartbeat inside narrative. Boyle is known for novels like World’s End and the Tortilla Curtain. He guided me toward mastering pacing, energy and emotional resonance.
Veteran journalists from KCBS and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner taught me that the clearest writing is the most courageous writing. They showed me how stories made a profound impact from the smallest kernel of emotional truth.
Our first platform and the stories we tried to tell
Horizon TV pushed Armenian storytelling into a new era. Under the leadership of Garbis Titizian, guided by Salpi Ghazarian and ABC’s Roxanne Makasjian, Horizon became the first consistent Armenian broadcast platform in Los Angeles to deliver timely news and send cameras to chronicle our stories.
The Vatche and Tamar Manoukian family donated cameras and editing systems that allowed us to document the Spitak earthquake, the Sumgait massacres and the Artsakh Liberation War.
Years later, their generosity brought my life full circle. The very family who enabled those critical documentaries now have their name adorning the magnificent Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Medical Plaza at UCLA, the facility that houses the miracle-working Dr. Kevork Kazanjian, my colorectal surgeon, and the brilliant Dr. Vatche Agopian, my liver surgeon. Few things reveal the circular movement of life as clearly as seeing familiar names return in unfamiliar, and now deeply personal, settings. Each cassette we delivered was a message of endurance, a vow that memory would not dissipate.
When Armenian families began using their first consumer camcorders to record April 24 commemorations, they sent their tapes across the diaspora, often carried by Levon Travel customers to the conference room that was the Horizon studio. Stepan Partamian, Chris Guldalian, Albert Kodagolian and I would take turns driving the edited Horizon TV tapes from Glendale to West LA to deliver them to KSCI’s control room each Saturday.
I attempted to bring Armenian narratives to cinema through my own screenplays. One followed a Hollywood actor captured during the early war in Artsakh. Another, written with Horizon colleague Chris and titled CNN Reporting, explored a journalist’s spiritual search for identity in the homeland.
My screenplay Sessions examined AIDS and homophobia within a conservative fledgling republic. At its U.S. production stage, we had commitments from Jeremy Sisto and Marisa Ryan. Then life intervened.
Albert Kodagolian, who walked out of his pre-med classes to come to Horizon and ask me how to get into the business, was set to direct Sessions. Later in his career, he produced and directed million-dollar Super Bowl commercials but his promising career ended suddenly. An illness and his loss cut the trajectory of a career that deserved to unfold fully.
A call for renewal
Years ago, in March 2010, ahead of the 95th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the late Allan Yekikian, whose life was also cut short, co-wrote a treatise with me in Asbarez calling for a modern Zartonk, or awakening, urging young Armenians to use cameras, digital tools and social media to shape the global narrative about identity and history.
Looking back, that piece feels prophetic. The generation we imagined is now carrying Armenian stories into the world’s imagination.
Adrineh Gregorian, Tamar Kevonian, Ellina Abovian, Lory Tatoulian, Jason Takhtadjian and Silva Harapetian, among others, explored representation across academia, journalism and digital platforms. Each of us worked to expand the space for Armenian stories.
Returning to the newsroom
Another circle closes when Araksya Karapetyan, a respected Armenian-American journalist, helps guide the next part of my career. Araksya has earned recognition for her deep commitment to honest reporting and for lifting up Armenian stories in Los Angeles journalism. Years earlier, I invited her to help me co-host the annual Armenia Fund Telethon, and she accepted without hesitation. Her participation showed me how one invitation can gather hope across communities.
Covering the loss of Artsakh and the genocide in Gaza at Al Jazeera took an emotional toll. Writing about the collapse of people’s lives, not just places, felt heavy. Witnessing once vibrant communities reduced to scenes of devastation made me question the power of words when blood floods the page. The human toll in Gaza reached unimaginable levels, with reports indicating more than 70,000 Palestinian deaths after relentless conflict. For journalists, telling these stories often leads to a deep sense of helplessness.
After leaving Al Jazeera in Qatar and returning home to California, I carried this emotional weight. Araksya then brought me into the FOX 11 newsroom. She survived the devastating Spitak earthquake, the same quake that shaped my earliest connection to our ancestral homeland. Her resilience reminds me that bearing witness matters. Her trust gives me renewed purpose when despair feels overwhelming.
This reunion felt like coming home. I cannot erase what happened in Artsakh or Gaza, but working alongside someone who understands loss reminds me that stories matter. Sometimes, the circle closes not when tragedy ends but when we allow others to help carry our grief forward together.
Her presence arrived precisely when I needed direction.
Full circle.
A Winter’s Song and the meaning of we
A Winter’s Song reflects a community reclaiming its voice. Edgar Damatian, Krista Marina and Kev Orkian, all of whom I worked with during the Telethon years, brought authenticity and warmth to the film.
This important film carries the emotional weight of a community pushing its stories into the world. Another full circle moment for me was remembering meeting these young people on the set of my final Telethon: Edgar Damatian with his open, steady presence; the talented Krista Marina with her Zen warmth and glow; and Kev Orkian with his chaotic, comedic, deeply Armenian energy.
The film shows how far we’ve come from the days of green curtains and borrowed gear. It shows what becomes possible when vision meets resources, when a community decides that its stories matter.
Earlier that weekend, I watched Pluribus on Apple TV. Its exploration of individuality and collective identity reminded me of Ayn Rand’s Anthem. It helped me see that individual creativity and community support do not cancel each other. They strengthen each other.
A Winter’s Song expresses this truth with quiet confidence.
The ground where our stories began
When the film on Amazon Prime ended, I stepped outside and looked toward the nearby parcel, the lot where KSCI once stood. That ground shaped my identity. It carried Armenian Teletime and Horizon into the living rooms of families who needed to see themselves onscreen. It taught us that we belonged in the narrative of this city.
I remembered the first time I touched a studio camera in Fresno. I remembered watching Sarky Mouradian films with Adiss Harmandian. I remembered loading Super-8 film with Kim Crawford in Rancho Palos Verdes, and how that coastline later became the place where I went to heal at Terranea. I remembered the reel-to-reel machines Seta and Hratch carried into community halls.
I remembered the Armenia Fund Telethon that connected a diaspora, becoming an international and vital space, funding large infrastructure development projects like arterial and lifeline highways in Armenia and Artsakh, housing compounds, hospitals, schools, water systems, agriculture. I spent years contributing to that broadcast. The recent tragedy in Artsakh remains raw, but the Fund’s impact stands.
Our foray into media in the diaspora had begun with simple, analogue broadcasts. We moved to public access. We entered university classrooms. We built community platforms. We wrote stories on paper. We attempted them in scripts. And now, we have films that carry our culture, memory and identity digitally to the world.
What we carried and what we still carry
The desire to see Armenian stories treated with dignity began long before my lifetime. It moved through musicians and filmmakers and teachers and students and volunteers and donors. A Winter’s Song is not only Angela Asatrian’s work. It is the result of a community refusing to let its story disappear.
Dreams do come true. They require patience and community, and a belief carried by many hands. My dreams did come true through Angela, Araksya, Atom and countless others thriving in the mainstream right now. They may not always happen by my own hand, but through the many hands of others. When others carry our dreams forward, the circle of life comes full circle. Dreams live not in one person alone but in the collective “we.”
Tonight, I understand that the dream was never only mine. It belonged to all of us.
The urge to chronicle
At Terranea, during the quiet evenings before returning to West LA, I lifted my phone and recorded the coastline, just as I did decades ago as a student. The waves pulled me back to earlier years. A song by Nune Yesayan rose in my mind.
The waves of the Pacific prompted “Qamuts Qshvats Husher” to rise from memory. Nune’s voice has always been my strongest connection to an ethereal sense of home. Her songs are my prayers honoring our collective memories and the legacy carried forward by Komitas, Sayat Nova, Egoyan, Saroyan and now Asatrian. The rhythm of Nune’s song blended with images on my phone, reminding me that our existential urge to chronicle and preserve our stories has never left me.
It simply waited for the right moment to resurface, bringing everything full circle.
