T.O. filmmaker documents Silent Genocide
By Rebecca Whitnall, [email protected]
Ventura County Star, CA
Sept 10 2004
Dr. Michael Hagopian speaks for those who no longer can. He’s a
storyteller by trade and his medium is film.
Much of his 90 years has been spent documenting a genocide that to
this day goes unheard of by even the well-educated and unrecognized
by many governments, including our own and countries involved in the
atrocities, he says.
In April 1915, the annihilation of almost 1.5 million Armenians
began. It is referred to as the Silent, or Secret Genocide.
Despite the great number of Armenians who lost their lives, Hagopian
isn’t shocked more people don’t know about it.
“I’m not surprised because there’s not been as much publicity,”
Hagopian said. “There is a lesser presence in the world of Armenians
than Jews. Also, there weren’t photographers and film because it was
much longer ago (than the Holocaust).”
The Turkish Ottoman empire claims the deaths were the result of civil
war. Hagopian’s films document that there was nothing civil at all
about these deaths.
Half-century of work
Most witnesses are now dead; the youngest remaining survivors would
be 86 now. Hagopian, however, has been filming interviews for more
than 50 years and has created what is reportedly the most complete
collection of testimonies about the Armenian genocide in the world.
His requirement in interviewing witnesses is that they were at least
10 when they witnessed the deaths, providing a more accurate account
than younger children could.
The Armenian Film Foundation, of which Hagopian is a founder and
chairman, is completing work on its third film in a trilogy, “The
Witnesses,” which documents the genocide.
“Caravan Along the Euphrates,” the series’ third film, incorporates
survivor accounts selected from the collection of more than 400
interviews filmed by Hagopian on four continents. The film’s target
release date is next year, coinciding with the 90th commemorative
year of the genocide and 35th anniversary of the film foundation.
The first film in the series, “Voices from the Lake,” was the
first feature-length documentary on the genocide and focuses on the
day-to-day tragedies that occurred in the city of Kharpert, Hagopian’s
hometown, where much of the annihilation took place.
“It was the city of no return for Armenians,” he said. They were
taken there but never able to leave.
The second film in the series, “Germany and the Secret Genocide,”
is set against the backdrop of World War I. It weaves interviews and
letters written by genocide survivors, with witnesses and experts in
the field to examine Germany’s involvement in the mass killings of
Armenians at the hands of the Turkish soldiers.
The organization’s films have won numerous awards, including the
prestigious Golden Camera Award in the history category from the U.S.
International Film and Video Festival, the largest festival of its
kind. It specializes in documentary, informational and industrial
films.
Hagopian also owns Atlantis Productions. He works from his home in
Thousand Oaks, where he lives with wife, Antoinette, and one of his
four children.
He has a doctorate in international relations from Harvard University,
is a graduate of University of California, Berkeley, and has done
more than two years of graduate work in cinema at the University of
Southern California.
Also, he has taught at a number of colleges and universities, including
the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was first inspired
to create documentaries.
Young filmmaker
Hagopian was unimpressed with the quality of a film presented by a
colleague as a possible teaching aid.
“It was very simplistic. I thought I could do better,” he said,
even though photography was only a mild hobby.
With that purpose in mind, he began looking for employment at
international universities and finally accepted a position at the
American University of Beirut in Lebanon, for the grand annual salary
of $2,000.
For a year he shot foot after foot of film and sent it back to an
adviser in the United States for critique.
He had no way of viewing the footage himself and his improvement
relied entirely on advice received.
The project begins
The following year, he shot 30,000 feet of film on the Nile, from
which he culled two movies. They won first prize at the Cleveland
Film Festival.
Encouraged, he went on to study filmmaking at USC.
“It wasn’t til 1965 that a community leader approached me and said
he wanted to mark the 50th anniversary of the genocide,” said Hagopian.
He agreed to work with the group and in a matter of weeks produced
a show for KCOP TV in Los Angeles titled “Where are My People.”
He said it was the first documentary on the secret genocide.
“It was a lamentation in a way, asking where these people are,”
he said.
His next film on the subject was the Emmy-nominated “Forgotten
Genocide.”
“Up til that time, I was doing them as individual films under the
Atlantis Production label,” he said.
The Armenian Film Foundation was established in 1969.
Though he tests the films by screening preliminary shows with members
of the foundation, he mostly works on them alone.
When working with a number of interviews and others’ stories,
“You let the film direct you,” he explained. “Once it directs you,
you do a lot of testing.”
But the creation, he said, “is kind of a one-man enterprise.”
“Documentary filmmaking is somewhat like being an artist. You can’t
make a statement by committee,” he said. “Do you think Michael Moore
works by committee?”
Hagopian said art films differ from documentaries in the way audiences
react to them.
“In art films, you’re expressing yourself, but I need to take the
audience into consideration,” he said. “If they don’t understand what
I’m saying, there’s no point.”
‘Asian Earth’
Hagopian’s next endeavor will be to revisit “Asian Earth,” a film
he made about life in India. “I think it’s my best work. It’s got
everything in it: life, marriage, death.”
The idea with this project would be having someone revisit the areas
covered in the film 100 years after the original footage was shot to
compare the way of life of people in both periods.
He also will be archiving the thousands of feet of film he’s taken
over the years for “The Witnesses.”
The foundation is looking at proposals by different agencies to take
on the job.
“I’m trying to tell the survivors’ stories,” he said.
“With such great violations of human rights there are lessons to
be learned.
“It’s a story that needs to be told.”