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The Genocide in Me Tour
The Genocide in Me is a co-production of
Informaction Films Inc. and Araz
Artinian Productions. The film had the financial support of
SODEC (Société de
Développement des Entreprises Culturelles), the Canada
Council for the Arts, the Conseil
des Arts et des Lettres de Québec and many individual
donors. The documentary was released in the Fall of 2005.
Artinian
was the recipient of six
awards from student film festivals
for her first documentary Surviving
on the Richter Scale.
She won the Best Documentary award
at the 29th Canadian Student Film
Festival (part of the Montreal
Film Festival) in 1998, and a Silver
Hugo at the 35th Chicago International
Film Festival in 1999. Her documentary
was broadcast on Radio-Canada (RDI)
and was also aired in Italy, France
and Poland. Artinian later worked
with Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan
as Head Researcher for his feature
film ARARAT.
| September - 2006 |
 |
Armenia
Lebanon
Syria |
Greece
Cyprus
Iran |
UAE |
Photo: Araz
Artinian (left) with Ian
Oliveri (Assistant
Director) , Ian Quenneville (Producer)
and Nathalie Barton (Executive
Producer) at the premiere of THE GENOCIDE IN ME in
Montreal on November 1st, 2005 at the Cinémathèque Québécoise. Photo
credit: Alexandre Gravel
Araz Artinian
 Canadian-Armenian
Araz Artinian spent 27 years
trying to comprehend her father’s obsession with his nationality.
She spent the next four years feeling growing degrees of that same “Armenian-ness” enter
her blood.
For the filmmaker,
understanding came around the family
table in Montreal, through the
lens of a camera in Turkey, through the voices of survivors in
North America of the very Genocide
that has been the theme of her
home life, through the lies of
a nationalistic tour guide,
through the shallow misunderstanding
of a contemporary in the land of
the “enemy”, and
at a memorial in what is
now left of her ancestors’ Armenia.
Professor of Philosophy and Coordinator
of the Center for the Study of
Human Rights at
the Worcester State College, Dr. Henry Theriault says: “There exists just
a small initial literature on such topics as the intergenerational transfer of
genocide
trauma.” For that and other reasons, Theriault calls The
Genocide In Me “an important teaching tool for
me as well as other professors
and secondary educators interested
in genocide/human rights and identity issues, not to mention
popular educators in the
Armenian and other communities
with similar historical experiences.”
If only for its documentation of
these survivors of the 20th century’s
first Genocide (whose numbers have
already decreased since their interviews),
the 52-minute film is of historical
significance. But broadened
from the confines of ethnicity,
The Genocide in Me is about a people being lost, and a
person being found.
It is about any of us who might ever ask: “Why am I who
I am?”
To contact Araz Artinian, send an email
to : info@twentyvoices.com |
