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Critics' Forum Article, 4.23.06

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  • Critics' Forum Article, 4.23.06

    The Genocide in Who?
    By Tamar Salibian

    Critics' Forum
    Film and Music
    April 23, 2006

    In "The Genocide in Me" (2005), Araz Artinian tells her story of being
    a Canadian-Armenian dealing with her father's national obsession
    and struggling with her own identity, while also recounting the
    atrocities of the Armenian Genocide and its repercussions. Part
    historical document, part travelogue and part family portrait, the
    film presents the Armenian Genocide not only as a horrific tragedy
    but as an eternal burden that the filmmaker carries in her personal
    life. Artinian begins the film with an important and very difficult
    question: how can she learn to understand her father's national
    obsession when her own perspective is so different from his? The film
    takes important steps to try to answer this and other questions.

    The film begins with Artinian visiting a memorial site while, in
    a voiceover, she presents her main argument. Artinian states that,
    for her, being Armenian was always "much more than being myself,"
    and that now, because of the Armenian Genocide, everything to do with
    her life, her happiness and her future, "goes back to 1915." Family
    footage shows the filmmaker as a young child playing on the beach,
    and with a close-up still frame resembling one from Francois Truffaut's
    "400 Blows," the film begins its journey.

    Artinian's parents were immigrants from Egypt who settled in Canada.

    Araz's father, Vrej Armen (which stands for "the revenge of the
    Armenians") is an activist in Montreal who was one of the founding
    members of the local Sourp Hagop School. Artinian explains how her
    grandmother's intense patriotism and pressure on her father led him
    to his activism and his political cause. Vrej Armen's cause is that
    of Genocide recognition, and he has influenced many lives with his
    community work. His influence on his own daughter, however, is more
    complex. "I've been carrying the weight of Turkey's denial in my
    schoolbag since my childhood," Araz recounts as she worries about
    visiting her parents. "`Asdvadz hedus,' which means `may God be with
    me'" she tells the camera before entering her parents' home to have
    dinner and talk.

    The film presents a splendidly interwoven mix of archival and recent
    footage showing Artinian as a child, a young woman and an adult. In
    the dinner scene, the editing masterfully combines old footage of the
    family at their dining room table with newer footage of Artinian asking
    her parents questions. The young Araz is a playful girl who sings and
    dances while the older, present-day Araz searches for answers from
    her family. The old footage shows the family affirming their Armenian
    language and customs so that Araz and her sister will learn them as
    well. The filmmaker presents these affirmations as pressure passed
    on from generation to generation resulting in resentment towards her
    culture. "I always had a love-hate relationship with my language,"
    Araz notes; yet she strives to understand the layers of her culture.

    Artinian wishes to understand her father's national obsession, his
    connection to the past, and the repercussions that the Genocide had on
    the Armenian people. She wonders, "How can I connect with something I
    had never seen before?" and soon embarks on a trip to Turkey to visit
    historic Armenian sites. On the trip, she encounters a Turkish tour
    guide who denies the major events of the Genocide.

    She meets an American traveler who questions such denials. And she
    spends time with a young Turkish man of Armenian descent who recounts
    his grandmother's stories of being rescued from the Genocide by a
    Turkish man who later became her husband. This trip proves to be
    fruitful to the viewer, as we are able to notice what has happened
    in Turkey over decades after the Genocide. Yet the viewer also feels
    that Artinian often skims the surface of her personal questions
    of identity. She asks, "Where do I belong? Do I belong in Armenia,
    in Canada or in Turkey?" but does not answer the question.

    While Artinian states, "I set aside my personal life" to understand
    her father's national obsession, the study of this obsession becomes
    sideswiped during the film by Artinian's own personal obsession with
    intermarriage, a question which is never fully explored. The loose
    connection between the study of Armenian history and the question of
    love and intermarriage becomes no more than melodrama, as the film
    is unable to suggest, ultimately, how one affects the other.

    Artinian argues at her parents' dinner table that intermarriage does
    not always have a negative effect on the continuation of Armenian
    culture, and her mother responds, "That's not the problem right now.

    The problem is that we have a huge cause ahead of us, and that is
    the recognition of the Genocide." Araz refuses to hear or understand
    her mother's important statement and quickly reminds her family that
    the intermarriage question is the important one for her. Herein,
    unfortunately, lies the film's biggest problem. Artinian attempts
    to present a complex study of her father, of Armenian history and
    of the effects of genocide. Yet in the final moments of the film,
    she returns to her question of intermarriage, telling the viewer,
    "In spite of the Genocide, I want to be Armenian and free." It is an
    unfortunate ending for a film that asks so many important questions,
    ones that perhaps cannot be answered in one film.

    All Rights Reserved: Critics Forum, 2006

    Tamar Salibian is a filmmaker and writer living in Los Angeles. She
    has written for AIM magazine. Her latest film, "Beautiful Armenians,"
    recently screened at the Armenian Film Festival in San Francisco.
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