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Armenian filmmaker seeks Jewish viewers
By Shayndi Raice - Monday June 5 2006
The Armenian genocide might not seem like a Jewish issue, but it should be according to Armenian filmmaker David Davidian, who has submitted a DVD on the genocide to the 2006 Boston Jewish Film Festival.
According to Davidian, producer of “The 1915 Turkish Genocide of the Armenians” and director of the Genocide Archive Project, the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide are closely related. In 1939, Hitler told his generals that they should not be worried about world condemnation for murdering millions of Jews because nobody remembered what happened to the Armenians. Davidian also suggested that many of the techniques used by Hitler were in fact copied from the Turkish genocide of the Armenians. Death marches, round-ups, and marking Armenian homes were all trademarks of the Turkish genocide, said Davidian.
“There are philosophical and actual connections,” he said. “The [Armenian] genocide was the first state-sponsored genocide against its own citizens. The second was Hitler. World governments ignored it as an internal problem. These things, even if denied, can’t be ignored because when they’re ignored it encourages someone else to do it.”
Davidian produced the film with director Franchot Lubin, who had previous experience collecting survivor testimonies while working for Steven Spielberg’s “Survivors of the Shoah” documentary. The two filmmakers documented accounts of Armenian genocide survivors who live in the Boston area today, some more than 100 years old. In addition to the submission to the Boston Jewish Film Festival, which will take place this fall, the two men have sent their film to hundreds of U.S. Congressmen as part of an education campaign.
“If the world did something about it in 1915, there would have been much less of chance of Hitler doing what he did to the European Jews,” said Davidian.
Although the film does not seem to have an easily apparent Jewish theme, Sarah Rubin of the Boston Jewish Film Festival said that while films must be relevant to the Jewish community, “We do stretch the envelope.”
While she could not comment on the film’s chances of being chosen for the festival, she added: “There are times when there might seem to be something that isn’t strictly Jewish themed but we program it in because there’s a clear connection.”
Franchot Lubin (left) and David Davidian produced a film on the Armenian genocide.Cites connections between Nazi genocide of Jews and Turkish genocide of Armenians
The Armenian genocide might not seem like a Jewish issue, but it should be according to Armenian filmmaker David Davidian, who has submitted a DVD on the genocide to the 2006 Boston Jewish Film Festival.
According to Davidian, producer of “The 1915 Turkish Genocide of the Armenians” and director of the Genocide Archive Project, the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide are closely related. In 1939, Hitler told his generals that they should not be worried about world condemnation for murdering millions of Jews because nobody remembered what happened to the Armenians. Davidian also suggested that many of the techniques used by Hitler were in fact copied from the Turkish genocide of the Armenians. Death marches, round-ups, and marking Armenian homes were all trademarks of the Turkish genocide, said Davidian.
“There are philosophical and actual connections,” he said. “The [Armenian] genocide was the first state-sponsored genocide against its own citizens. The second was Hitler. World governments ignored it as an internal problem. These things, even if denied, can’t be ignored because when they’re ignored it encourages someone else to do it.”
Davidian produced the film with director Franchot Lubin, who had previous experience collecting survivor testimonies while working for Steven Spielberg’s “Survivors of the Shoah” documentary. The two filmmakers documented accounts of Armenian genocide survivors who live in the Boston area today, some more than 100 years old. In addition to the submission to the Boston Jewish Film Festival, which will take place this fall, the two men have sent their film to hundreds of U.S. Congressmen as part of an education campaign.
“If the world did something about it in 1915, there would have been much less of chance of Hitler doing what he did to the European Jews,” said Davidian.
Although the film does not seem to have an easily apparent Jewish theme, Sarah Rubin of the Boston Jewish Film Festival said that while films must be relevant to the Jewish community, “We do stretch the envelope.”
While she could not comment on the film’s chances of being chosen for the festival, she added: “There are times when there might seem to be something that isn’t strictly Jewish themed but we program it in because there’s a clear connection.”
Franchot Lubin (left) and David Davidian produced a film on the Armenian genocide.Cites connections between Nazi genocide of Jews and Turkish genocide of Armenians