Joseph Hovsepian

Andre Hovsepian

DIRECTOR / PRODUCER
Joseph Hovsepian was born in 1973 in Iran. He started with event filming and editing at the age of 17. After dedicating three years of full time involvement in the Audio-Visual department of the AG central church in Iran, he found his interest and challenge in the field of cinema. After his father’s (Rev. Haik Hovsepian) martyrdom in 1994 in Iran, he focused his films on spiritual themes. As he says, “It was through my father’s encouragement that I’ve been able to fulfill my goals toward my career of sharing the message of hope through media.” Joseph studied Film & Cinema at Guildford Art School in England and since 1998 has started working full time producing and directing.
Soon after immigrating to CA in 2000, he founded the JFA productions (Joseph Film & Animation, LLC) and ever since has produced remarkable work for TV and Satellite stations, as well as his independent projects.

Some of Joseph's work include:

* The Tune of Nostalgia (2003) - Winner of "Best Foreign Movie" at WYSIWYG San Francisco film festival. Distributed in select theaters across America. A 105 minute feature portraying the journey of a refugee leaving Iran, looking for a refuge.
* The Prodigal Son (2001) - A short musical film, about a loving father.
* Crossing the Border of the Night (1998) - A feature drama.  Mass distributed and screened at the Commonwealth Institute in London; also aired on SAT-7 & CBN channels.
* Several other short films and music videos aired on ITV-UK Channels and various other satellites. 

DIRECTOR
Andre Hovsepian was born in 1984 in Iran. His passion for film and media started from an early age. He had the chance to pursue his career in film when his family immigrated to the United States in 1999. After graduating high school, he began his studies in Film at Pasadena City College. By the time he was 22 years old, he had already produced numerous successful music videos, youth related programs, short documentaries, and assisted his older brother Joseph in the making of his feature film, The Tune of Nostalgia. Andre believes that talents are God given; therefore his array of work usually focuses on moral values. In 2004, he joined the JFA Productions, and soon after started working on his father's story. According to him, "This is the most significant project I will probably ever work on, because it is the story of my role model and my inspiration."

JOSEPH'S PRODUCTION NOTES
The idea of making this documentary first occurred to me in 1995, a year after my
father's martyrdom. But I was not sure if emotionally I was ready to start such a huge undertaking. Nevertheless, I didn't stop filming clips that may have been important in the future. In 1999, four years later, when I was more confident in my filming skills and still had the great passion for this project, I started filming interviews and collecting archive footages in Iran. Interestingly, the majority of archive footages had been shot by myself when I was 17, not predicting one day they could become so important.

The production process of this documentary was stretched due to lack of budget and my family's immigration to U.S.  In 2004, my younger brother Andre came on board and we were able to make short promos to raise funds with the materials and footage we already had. Soon after in 2005, God brought Open Doors International in our way, and they decided to sponsor this project.
The story in its draft format was sent to Mark Bradley in UK to write the final script.  After several script revisions, we were able to start filming the official interviews. Over 40 interviews and numerous re-enactment scenes were completed by our small production crew traveling to Turkey, England, and across the United states. Some contract based filming was also done in Iran and Armenia.