Carla
Garapedian
| Peter McAlevey | Timothy
F. Swain | Bill Yahraus | Contributors
CARLA GARAPEDIAN, DIRECTOR
The only American ever to anchor the famous BBC World News, Carla
Garapedian earned her Ph.D. in international relations at the
prestigious London School of Economics, before cutting her teeth
as a correspondent for NBC and later being swept up by the BBC
as a director and anchor.
Since leaving the BBC (where, among other stories, she exposed
major faults in Europe's most dangerous nuclear reactors), she
has cut a swath as an international documentary director, working
for Hardcash Productions, the company that produced the Emmy award-winning
film about women in Afghanistan, "Beneath the Veil."
Her sequel, "Lifting the Veil," premiered in the US
on the Sundance Channel in August 2003. In her film "Dying
for the President" she made world headlines by sneaking into
Chechnya to document Russian war crimes. More recent headlines
surrounded her 2005 film, "My Friend the Mercenary"
about the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea, linked to Mark
Thatcher and the notorious mercenary, Simon Mann.
Garapedian beat President Bush to the punch in exploring that
other "axis of evil," North Korea, in the acclaimed
documentary "Children of the Secret State" that details
starvation, human rights abuses and cannibalism in that impoverished
nation. In 2005, her film "Iran Undercover," about the
student movement in Iran, won the prestigious Edward R. Murrow
award, as part of the PBS Frontline World series.
In addition to anchoring for BBC World News, Garapedian has been
a correspondent for NBC Sunrise, NBC Nightly News and CNBC financial
news. She narrated the Armenian genocide film, "Voices from
the Lake" by the acclaimed filmmaker, J.M. Hagopian, as well
as co-writing his award-winning film "Germany and the Secret
Genocide."
The headline about her in the LA Times Calendar section is probably
the best description of her work so far -- "Documenting Truth
in Dangerous Places."
