Kickstarter campaign launched to fund Genocide film

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Armenian National Committee of Australia has partnered with Sydney-based filmmaker Shahane Bekarian to produce the first Australian-made documentary on the Armenian Genocide, according to the ANC Australia official website.

Today, a crowdfunding campaign was launched with Kickstarter to help raise funds for this project. ANC Australia is seeking to raise $20,000 to help fund the production of the film, set for a release in 2015, on the Armenian Genocide centennial.

The film, entitled “Children of the Genocide” is drawing on archival footage of interviews with Australia-based survivors of the Armenian Genocide, who are now no longer alive. It also features interviews with their descendants, currently living in Australia.

The film is described as "an examination of the sentiment of Armenians in Australia 100 years after the Genocide which saw them flee their motherland after World War I. The issue to be explored relates to the surviving Armenians who found refuge in Australia. Although they fled to survive, we explore whether relocation is enough to settle the attempt of genocide and the upheaval from their homeland. After their families were brutally killed and their livelihood destroyed, was surviving enough? What basic human needs remained unsettled? Perhaps the success in maintaining their hereditary can only be measured by the strength of their new roots in Australia, the stability of life they have laid out for their kids and the separation they have made from racial intolerance. Is Australia the place? Have they gone down the path of cultural assimilation or integration in Australian society?"

"This is the first such film produced in our community, and through this grassroots fundraising campaign on Kickstarter, members of our community can be part of this historic project," said ANC Australia Community Relations Director, Stephen Abolakian.