2010_03 Hye Sharzhoom Newspaper March 2010

              March 2010
Hye Sharzhoom
5
San Joaquin Valley Armenian Community Marks Vartanantz
Evelyn Demirchian
Staff Writer
On Thursday, February 11, Armenian community members gathered at Holy Trinity Armenian
Apostolic Church to honor
Vartanantz, in commemoration of
the Battle of Avarayr on June 2,
451. On that day, the Christian Armenians of the Sassanid Persian
Empire took arms against their Persian aggressors and the Armenian
leaderGeneral Vartan Mamigonian
became a symbol of religious freedom. The traditional day of commemoration by the Church is the
Thursday evening before the beginning of Lent.
The Knights and Daughters of
Vartan Yeprad Tahlij and Alidz
Otyag and Holy Trinity Armenian
Apostolic Church sponsored the
event, with the participation of the
First Armenian Presbyterian
Church, St. Paul Armenian Church,
Pilgrim Armenian Congregational
Church, and St. Gregory Armenian
Church of Fowler. Each year the
site of the commemoration rotates
and is hosted by one of these local
churches.
The evening's events began with
a moving celebration of the Divine
Liturgy and prayers for the Armenian martyrs. The Liturgy was eel-
Children of the Keyan Armenian School performing in the
Holy Trinity Church Hall after services. photam.Alain Ekmalian
ebrated by parish priest Fr. Vahan
Gosdanian, who also gave the homily in Armenian, with an English
homily by Rev. Ara Guekguezian,
pastor of Pilgrim Armenian Congregational Church.
In a moving conclusion to the
service, Rev. Guekguezian reaffirmed the resilience of faith against
the changes that time brings, proclaiming that "empires come and
empires go," but that the relationship of Armenians to God has been,
and will continue to remain, steadfast.
Following the services, students
from the Keyan Armenian Community School of Fresno presented
a tableau from the period in the
Church hall. The children were
dressed as Armenians of the fifth
century and recited poems and sang
hymns of the period.
A brief history of events shows
that the Armenian people, led by
Vartan Mamigonian and by the
Armenian Church, stood to lose
everything by defending their religious beliefs.
Armenia was partitioned between two superpowers, the Byzantine Empire and the Sassanid
Persian Empire, and the Armenian
lands were persistently fought over
by them.
In 450 A.D. King Yazdigerd of
Persia attempted to forcefully convert the Christian Armenians to
Zoroastrianism, to the worship of
the Persian sun god Mazda, and
went as far as to hold the nakharars
(princes) hostage until they submitted. A few of the families converted, but most remained steadfast. By the spring of 451 peace
talks broke down and the Persians
attempted to cut off Armenia from
her allies and to impose their religion over the entire land.
In the summer of 451 General
Vartan, having rallied his fellow
Armenians around the Church, led
an army of 66,000 to the banks of
the Dghmoud River, on the eve of
the Feast of the Pentecost. Standing up against the powerful Persian
army, estimated to number between
100,000 and 200,000 strong, the
vastly outnumbered Armenians
fought to the death. By the end of
the battle 1,000-plus Armenian
warriors had died, including General Vartan.
General Vartan, who was sainted
by the Armenian Church and hailed
as an Armenian national hero, today stands as a symbol of the
struggles Armenians have had in
keeping their religious beliefs.
Christianity is a vital piece of
the Armenian identity, and during
the past 1,700 years has proven
critical for the resilience the Armenian people.
Children from the Keyan Armenian Community School of
Fresno dressed as soldiers from the Vartanantz battle.
Eleventh Annual Armenian Film Festival Presents Diverse Films
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Canadian film-maker Noura
Kevorkian's An jar: Flowers,
Goats, and Heroes was a
popular film at the Festival.
Evelyn Demirchian
Staff Writer
Films showcased at this year's
1 lth Annual Armenian Film Festival held Friday, February 26, ranged
in form with entries from animated
shorts to lengthier documentaries.
International directors sent in their
works and of the films shown, several struck an emotional chord as
they hit at the heart of what the
Armenian community will be remembering and recognizing next
month with Armenian Genocide
Awareness Week in April.
The Film Festival is sponsored
by the Armenian Studies Program
and Armenian Students Organization at Fresno State, with partial
financial support provided by the
Diversity Awareness Program of
the University Student Union and
was held on the Fresno State campus.
Hove (the Wind) by Alex Webb,
is a very short film but had serious
subject matter. Clocking in at nine
minutes, this beautifully shot tale
involves two women and their se
crets; one an older store owner with
a dark book and tragic past, and the
other a younger woman recently
struck by tragedy.
The younger woman, Nina, lost
her child but the audience never
finds out why. Nina catches the
bookstore owner, Zara, glancing
through a book emblazoned with a
swastika on the cover. Zara refuses
to show Nina the book, fearing that
the matter contained within its pages
i s too painful for Nina to see, due to
her recent tragic loss. Zara goes to
find a trinket she had been given by
a surviving relative of hers from
the Armenian Genocide who had
lost nearly all her children, and as
she comes back Nina leaves, going
to look for the Nazi book herself.
What young Nina finds in the
book, a gathering of blueprints for
the Nazi s, ties together Zara's family history and the special trinket to
the book in something larger and
darker. It reveals a startling connection between the tragedies experienced by Armenians in 1915
being a direct influence upon the
Holocaust some 30 years later.
The technical aspects of the film
are also worth noting. The dialogue
and soundtrack are kept very minimal; the few words said between
the women are enough to express
the gravity of their stories. An exceptional storyteller, Webb has received many honors for Hove, including an Honorable Mention for
Best Short at the Pomegranate Film
Festival in Toronto back in September 2009.
Another film that has gained
plenty of attention is Anjar: Flowers, Goats and Heroes, by director
and photographer Noura
Kevorkian. A stunning portrait of
the Armenian village of Anjar in
the Bekka Valley of Lebanon,
Kevorkian tells her story with recreations of her memory from living
in Anjar as a young child in the
1970's. In 2001, Noura's mother
wrote to her that one of the village
elders, Sarik Nene, had passed
away, prompting Kevorkian to pay
a visit to Anjar.
Mixed with older photos, live
reels from her home video camera,
and historical documents,
Kevorkian's film takes us along to
Anjar, and focuses on her childhood and specifically the summers
when her mother would take her to
the village elders to listen to their
stories, which range from dreams
to light-hearted anecdotes. Soon
though, the Lebanese Civil War
would break out, and many Armenians from Beirut fled to Anjar for
safety.
Several films from Turkey
were received, including
Mehmet Binay's Talking Pictures.
During this time, the stories become darker, and young Noura
comes to find out about the elders'
experiences in World War I, the
Turkish government's harsh treatment, and ultimate decision to wipe
out the Armenians from their lands.
The stories of the Genocide came
to light for young Kevorkian, and
she comes to find out that the early
settlers of Anjar were refugees from
Musa Dagh.
Musa Dagh is a heroic story, as
the six Armenian villages were
destroyed or evacuated by the
Turks, but those who survived by
escaping to the mountains were able
to withstand the Turkish soldiers
until French military ships came to
their rescue. Placed at first in a
refugee camp in Port Said, Egypt,
the survivors were sent by the
French and Lebanese government
to establish their own village in the
Bekka Valley.
A moving tribute to those survivors, Anjar is a well—paced narrative of discovery and appreciation.
It has also been showcased in several festivals, including the ARPA
International Film Festival in 2009.
The film is eighty-four minutes
long, and narrated by Kevorkian in
English.
Cutting to a lighter film is Dress
Story. An animated short, and only
five minutes in length, Dress Story
is the tale of a He-Dress and She-
Dress who are happily married until the He-Dress cheats on his wife
with a Waitress. The two adulterous characters then poison the poor
She-Dress and toss her into a garbage bin.
The characters don't have bodies; they are instead 3-D animated
outlines of clothing with invisible
body forms. It leaves to the imagination what the characters really
look like, and it is an amusing new
animated form that differs from
traditional visuals.
The two remaining documentaries, Talking Pictures by Mehmet
Binay, and Komitas Hairig by
Baron Maronian, were both short
films. Talking Pictures focuses on
the aftermath of Mehmet Binay's
main film Whispering Memories,
which dealt with Armenian Christians who had converted to Islam
and had become "Turkified" after
the Genocide. Talking Pictures
finds Binay getting an email from a
man named Ghazaros Kerjilian,
whose father came from the village
of Geben, where Whispering
Memories was documented.
Ghazaros and Mehmet traveled
back to Geben with Ghazaros's
niece to meet the people of his
father's hometown. Those who inhabit the village welcomed them
warmly, and relayed to their new
friends the troubles they have when
they reveal their Armenian ancestry to the Turkish citizens they live
with. It is easier for them to not
recognize their own past, seeing as
it brings conflict and creates anxieties among the groups.
A moving portrait of a beautiful
old village, Binay creates a lovely
visual with all stop motion and pictures. It is Binay who also has Armenian roots in Turkey, so this
project is a personal one as well.
Komitas Hairig on the other end
focuses its lens on the Armenians
inTurkey during the Genocide, and
specifically upon Komitas
Vardapet, an important figure in
Armenian culture, who was a classically trained musician and priest
who is hailed today as a martyr. He
went mad after witnessing the
atrocities of the 1915 Genocide and
spent his final years in a clinic in
Paris before passing away in 1935.
This documentary contains interviews about Komitas and the
history of the treatment of the Armenian priest from Very Rev. Fr.
Nareg Berberian and Dr. Richard
Hovanissian. The documentary was
an interesting historical addition to
the Film Festival, with its clear
telling ofthe life of Komitas Hairig.
Overall, the films chosen for
this year's Festival all touched upon
similar themes of loss and survival
and most of all, hope.