Xavier Lassiter – Arts & Entertainment Editor
Addressing an audience, in a student center devoid of students, he made his point clear: his film wasn’t for them.
“The film was not made for Armenians,” he said. “I like doing this especially when there are students—it’s important that we deliver these stories to the non-Armenians.”
Bared Maronian wrote and directed “Orphans of the Genocide,” a new documentary about the experiences of the orphaned children of Armenians killed in the mass genocide of 1915. He screened the film in the Adanti Student Center to raise awareness of his culture’s plight.
He said that while his documentary has been shown on some public broadcasting stations, he wants to reach a larger audience.
“This film already aired on four PBS stations—it was offered to 12 million viewers so far,” Maronian said. “My personal goal is by the 100th anniversary we will have made it available to 100 million viewers.”
According to the Armenian National Institute, approximately one million Armenians were killed from 1915 to 1918 by the Ottoman Empire. Hundreds of thousands became homeless, including thousands of children.
Though there is no day of national remembrance in the United States, Maronian said raised awareness was a much better goal.
“I don’t really care if the genocide gets recognized,” he said. “My goal is not to convince somebody to recognize the genocide, because if we tell stories like this, we don’t need that—why do you have to go after them and beg them to recognize the genocide?”
Maronian went to great lengths to procure and include rare footage of the Armenian orphans from the early 20th century.
“My personal promise to myself was to show something that hasn’t been done before since this was the first film about the Armenian orphans of the genocide,” he said. “It was a lot of research—we tapped into many of the Armenian organizations’ archives—you name it, we contacted them.”
Maronian said he tried to talk to as many relatives of the orphans as he could. He said his interviews with them were candid and powerful, and cited his interview with the daughter of one of the victims as an example of their perseverance.
“The day we arrived to her house she had made her hair up, she prepared breakfast for us, we sat down and ate with her—she was an amazing lady,” he said. “I asked her, why are you so happy? I don’t understand how you are so content—she said ‘that’s life.’”
Maronian said she constantly tried to live in the moment instead of reliving her tortuous past.
“She probably only told us five or ten percent of what she went through,” he said. “In the film she says ‘I don’t want to remember, I remember, but I don’t want to remember’—that’s a very powerful thing.”
In the documentary there is a segment devoted to 20th century Armenian artists whose work was directly inspired by the genocide. Maronian said there are still many Armenian painters who are inspired by it to this day.
“Nowadays I guarantee you probably 50 or 60 percent of the current Armenian artists do have some sort of rendition of the Genocide,” he said. “There are probably 100 Armenian artists who have painted scenes from the genocide without them seeing light—only reading about them, hearing about them from their grandfathers or fathers.”
Armen Marsoobian, chairperson for the philosophy department, whose family was directly affected by the genocide, said the tragedy is a major inspiration for much of Armenian poetry.
“Poetry is so important to Armenians because many of the important poets were killed during the genocide,” he said. “But the ones that survived, and further generations to this day, write poetry that is in many ways related to the genocide.”
Before Maronian concluded his presentation, he again stressed his mission to prevent an entire history of people and culture from vanishing: “It’s about you letting them know it’s there, that helps a lot. I’ve had a person tell me ‘you know man, I’m 60 years old and until ten or 15 years ago I didn’t know nothing about this. Now, I’m reading it on the Internet, that’s how I know.’ It’s your responsibility to help spread the word.”
Photo Credit: Mzuriana
