ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: FILMMAKER APO TOROSYAN TO PRESENT "THE MORGENTHAU STORY"

PanARMENIAN.Net
02.04.2009 01:06 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Descended from survivors of the Armenian Genocide,
filmmaker Apo Torosyan hopes his art transforms prejudice and hate
into tolerance and compassion.

Growing up in Turkey, he learned his father’s parents had both starved
to death after the genocidal massacres of 1915.

Yet when Torosyan screens his newest film Wednesday in the Framingham
Library in Massachusetts, it will honor a man who fought oppression at
great personal risk while refusing to preach hate, Daily News reports.

His hour-long film, "The Morgenthau Story," was shown on Wednesday,
April 1 in the Costin Room of the library in Framingham (US). "I’m
trying to reach out and warn people genocide is still with us today,"
said Torosyan. "Too often we don’t see it. But when you say ‘us’ and
‘them,’ you’re already prejudging people."

A shorter version of his film will be shown on April 23 in Peabody
City Hall.

The son of a Greek mother and Armenian father, Torosyan earned his
bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts
in the 1960s.

He has exhibited his rich, moody paintings in more than 40 solo and
20 group shows in Europe and North America. His paintings are in the
permanent collections of several museums, including the Museum of
Modern Art in Bordeaux, France, the Armenian Library and Museum of
America in Watertown, Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, and the
Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg.

Now 67, Torosyan has made seven documentaries, including four
dealing with aspects of the genocide and three others he describes as
philosophic "meditations." Since immigrating to the United States in
1986, he fears he can’t return to Turkey because on an earlier visit
he expressed his opinion about the Armenian Genocide, which puts him
in danger of imprisonment.

Torosyan’s documentary incorporates interviews with the three
descendants of Henry Morgenthau Sr., ambassador to Constantinople
from 1913 to 1916, and archival footage about Turkish oppression of
the Armenian minority.

He credits Morgenthau for trying to alert the world to the Ottoman
massacres of Armenians and other Christians and later, as chairman
of the Greek Resettlement Commission, saving thousands after the 1922
Smyrna massacre.

Torosyan said his films present history objectively so future
generations can recognize the symptoms of ethnic, religious and racial
prejudice before they take effect. "I believe history should be known
so we don’t forget the past," he said. "I’m trying to reach out to
youth in high school and college. They should know what happened."