NEW STREET PHOTOGRAPHY BOOK ON POST-GENOCIDE ERA TO BE PUBLISHED
April 16, 2015 – 14:22 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net – 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, a press release says.
“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.
The survivors of the Armenian Genocide and their progeny were once
again victimized when Lebanese brothers took up arms against one
another. Many residents of the Armenian enclave of Bourj Hammoud were
killed and injured; others were forced to leave their homes as they
had during the Genocide.
“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 13, 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.”
BIRD’S NEST is the product of Madzounian’s years of meticulous and
insightful photography with the goal to capture the essence and
historic importance of his own birthplace.
After leaving his nest, Madzounian earned a master’s degree in film
at the University of California, Los Angeles. The filmmaker then
spent years working on commercial and independent productions and
directing and producing his own projects.
“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.”