NEW STREET PHOTOGRAPHY BOOK CHRONICLES THE LEGACY OF BOURJ HAMMOUD

12:41, April 16, 2015

Beirut Neighborhood Became Home to Thousands of Armenian Genocide
Survivors

On the occasion of the Armenian Genocide Centennial and the 40th
anniversary of the start of the Lebanese Civil War, filmmaker
and documentarian Ara Madzounian is releasing a book of original
photographs that chronicles Bourj Hammoud, the Beirut suburb which
became home for Armenian Genocide survivors.

Madzounian, who was born in Bourj Hammoud to parents who survived
the Armenian Genocide, has been at the helm of scores of Armenian
and non-Armenian multimedia projects around the world. His resume
includes directing films, documentaries, producing popular music and
telethons and performing theatrical productions.

After wrapping up his feature cinematography work on the feature film
Meltdown, to be released in August, he is turning his focus on BIRD’S
NEST, a published book of talking pictures and essays by a selected
group of academicians, writers and artists.

“I wanted to create a lasting legacy about this place,” says
Madzounian. “For more than 50 years, Bourj Hammoud served as the
cultural, intellectual and political beacon for the Armenian Diaspora.”

BIRD’S NEST is the culmination of Madzounian’s laborious and
emotion-provoking work to capture the soul and preserve the memories
of his birthplace, one of the first post-Genocide communities to
be established.

For generations, Bourj Hammoud was the safe harbor that allowed broken
families to get on their feet again after one of the most tragic
chapters in their history. In the safety of Lebanon, the community
flourished before it abruptly found itself in the middle of their
host nation’s civil war.

“Ara’s photographs of the faces, the streets, the old buildings and the
narrow alleyways of Bourj Hammoud recall to me all of the richness of
the place, the personal histories and the grand narratives of the past
hundred years,” says cultural anthropologist at the Kevorkian Center
for Near Eastern Studies at New York University, Joanne Randa Nucho.

A Kickstarter campaign launched on April 13th, the 40th anniversary of
the start of the Lebanese civil war that began in 1975 and continued
until 1990. Crowdsourcing will fund the costs of publishing BIRD’S
NEST, a book of photographs Nucho says capture “the ephemeral moments
of life in this place.”

To support the project and purchase a copy of the book, please go to:

“These photographs are an amazing legacy to a vanishing pocket of
Armenian culture,” says Oscar nominated director Atom Egoyan. “For
those who have never visited Bourj Hammoud, the fabled Armenian
neighborhood in Beirut, this collection will be overwhelming.”