Aram Avakian

Aram A. Avakian (April 23, 1926 – January 17, 1987) was an American film editor and director. His work in the latter role includes Jazz on a Summer's Day and the indie film End of the Road (1970).

Life and work Aram "Al" Avakian was born in Manhattan, New York, in 1926 to Armenian parents from Iran and Soviet Georgia. He graduated Horace Mann School and Yale University before serving as a Naval officer on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. On the G.I. Bill after the war, he went to France where he attended the Sorbonne. There he was part of a tight group of young friends who defined the American literary movement of 1950s Paris, including Terry Southern, William Styron, John P. Marquand, and George Plimpton. In 1953, Avakian returned to the United States and apprenticed under famed photographer Gjon Mili who got him started in documentary editing. In his spare time Avakian took still photographs of the legendary jazz sessions his brother the jazz producer George Avakian recorded. In 1958, he directed, a filmed record of the Newport Jazz Festival. The result, Jazz on a Summer's Day (1959), which Avakian also edited, is credited with being "the first feature-film documentary of a music festival." LIFE magazine's November 7, 1969, issue covered the film in a spectacular 9-page article, and in-depth interviews ran in Esquire and Playboy. In a review of the film in The New York Times, Roger Greenspun wrote of End of the Road: "The precise truth of, say, 5 in a summer afternoon on the lawn of an assistant professor in a small country college has perhaps never been caught in a commercial movie before -- but that is the kind of precise truth this movie captures again and again." His children with Dorothy Tristan are photojournalist/author Alexandra Avakian and guitarist Tristan Avakian.

Selected filmography

As editor (partial list) Jazz on a Summer's Day (1959) Girl of the Night (1960) The Miracle Worker (1962) Lilith (1964) Mickey One (1965) You're a Big Boy Now (1966) The Comedians (1967) The Next Man (1976) Honeysuckle Rose (1980)

As director (partial list) Jazz on a Summer's Day (with Bert Stern as co-director) (1959) Lad, A Dog (with Leslie H. Martinson) (1962) One Night Stands (1967) (Documentary) End of the Road (1970) Cops and Robbers (1973) 11 Harrowhouse (1974)