Golden Apricot Festival Kicks Off Amid Censorship Allegations

Opening ceremonies for the 14th annual Golden Apricot International Film Festival (Yerevan) were held on Sunday, July 9, kicking off this year’s festival amid controversy stemming from the organizers’ decision to cancel an off-competition screening of 40 films showcasing work of filmmakers from around the world, with some accusing organizers of censorship.

Filmmakers who had submitted their work to be screened in an off-competition program entitled, “Armenians: Internal And External Views,” were informed Friday through an email from Golden Apricot organizers that the screening of the entire slate of films was cancelled, without elaborating on a reason for this decision.

Art of Armenian diaspora wins at Venice Biennale: Worldwide weeds

Avedis Hadjian

 

The Armenian pavilion, hosted in a Venetian monastery that has sheltered the culture for 300 years, won the Golden Lion this year.

 

“The botanical gardens at Salerno were in a poor state after decades of dereliction, and when they started renovating them, they found strange wild plants and exotic flowers blooming,” said Silvina Der-Meguerditchian, an Armenian-Argentine artist based in Berlin. She displayed her new installation, Treasures, at this year’s Venice Biennale, with 17 other, mainly diaspora artists (www.armenity.net), in the Armenian pavilion at the Mekhitarist order’s monastery of St Lazarus of the Armenians, on a tiny island in the Venetian lagoon. She had recreated a manuscript, a compilation of folk medicine recipes her great-grandmother wrote down in a notebook in Buenos Aires more than 70 years ago.

Turkey Losing Propaganda War Over Syrian Armenians

Amberin Zaman



“The bearded men came to our home. They spoke Turkish. They rifled through our belongings and asked if we had guns.” This is how Sirpuhi Titizyan, a refugee from Kassab, a mainly Armenian village in northern Syria that was overrun by jihadists fighters on March 21, described her ordeal to Agos, an Istanbul-based Armenian weekly.

The frail octogenarian blamed Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for Kassab’s fall. “Had Erdogan not cleared the path to Kassab, this many evil men would not have come,” Titizyan said. “May Allah blind Erdogan,” she thundered in a separate interview with Aris Nalci, a Turkish-Armenian blogger.

On the Way to Baykoz

Nigol Bezjian



I was in Istanbul recently as part of a Lebanese production team working on a mobile phone commercial for a third country. Normally this would have taken place in Lebanon, but the politically unstable conditions here are diverting work into Turkish coffers. Interestingly, I was booked in a hotel located only a hundred meters away from the Armenian Agos newspaper, whose founder, Hrant Dink, was assassinated on Jan. 19, 2007. While resting and waiting for time to pass, I recalled my first ever visit to Istanbul where, once again unknowingly, I had booked a hotel just a street away.

In 2009, I was back in the city to film Marc Nichanian for “Milk, Carnation & a Godly Song,” my film about Taniel Varoujan, the Armenia poet who was killed in the genocide.

Constantinople and Smyrna in the Diasporan Armenian and Greek Imaginaries

Jennifer Manoukian

 



. . . Բայց դուն, տեսի՜լք ընտանի, հիմա ա՜յնչափ հեռացած,
Ըսէ՜, իրաւ է որ ա՜լ պիտի երբեք չբացուիս
 Դիմացն զքեզ փնտռող իմ անսահման կարօտիս . . . ։
Դուն որ եղար, ո՜վ Պոլիս, լոյսն աչքերուս նորաբաց,
Ճի՞շդ է, ըսէ՜, որ ա՜լ մենք օտարնե՜ր ենք իրարու
 Եւ իրաւունք չունի՜մ ես քու հողիդ մէջ թաղուելու. . . ։

[But you, familiar vision now so far away,
Tell me, is it true that you will never again open your arms wide for
My limitless longing that has been searching for you?
You, oh Constantinople, you that became the light of my newly opened eyes,
Tell me, is it true that we are now strangers to each other
And that I no longer have the right to be buried in your soil?]

In Armenian, writers can express longing, yearning, and nostalgia not only through the words they select, but through their careful use of punctuation. The ( ՜ ), called yergar in Armenian, is an evocative particularity of the language: in lengthening the vowel over which it is placed, it has the power to heighten the plaintive, wistful tone of a text. In the final stanzas of Vahan Tekeyan’s 1924 poem “Constantinople,” printed above, the yergar allows the anguished intonations and quiet disbelief of the poet to reverberate in our ears as we become participants in his requiem for a city that has spurned him.