Suzanne Khardalian’s new film on Genocide survivors to be released in Sept

PanARMENIAN.Net - “Grandma Khanoum was not like every one else. As a child I remember her as a wicked woman. She despised physical contact. This was a grandma who never hugged, gave no kisses. And she wore those gloves, which hid her hands and the tattoos. They hid her secret.” This is how Suzanne Khardalian describes her grandmother.

Khardalian is the director and producer of riveting new film called, “Grandma’s Tattoos” that lifts the veil of thousands of forgotten women—survivors of the Genocide—who were forced into prostitution and were tattooed to distinguish them from the locals.

”As a child I thought these were devilish signs that came from a dark world. They stirred fear in me. But the tattoos on grandma’s hands and face were a taboo, they never spoke about it,” explains Khardalian. “Grandma’s Tattoos” is a journey into the secrets of the family. Eventually, the secret behind Grandma Khanoum’s blue marks are revealed.

“Grandma was abducted and kept in slavery for many years somewhere in Turkey. She was also forcibly marked, -tattooed – as a property, the same way you mark cattle. The discovery of the story has shaken me. I share the shame, the guilt and anger that infected my grandma’s life. Grandma Khanoum’s fate was not an aberration. On the contrary tens of thousands of Armenian children and teenagers were raped and abducted, kept in slavery,” explained Suzanne Khardalian.

In 1919, just at the end of WW I, the Allied forces reclaimed 90,819 Armenian, young girls and children who, during the war years, were forced to become prostitutes to survive, or had given birth to children after forced or arranged marriages or rape. Many of these women were tattooed as a sign that they belonged to abductor. European and American missionaries organized help and picked up and saved thousands of refugees who later were scattered all over the world to places like Beirut, Marseille and Fresno.

The story of Grandma’s Tattoos is a personal film about what happened to many Armenian women during the Genocide 1915. Filmmaker and writer Suzanne Khardalian makes a personal journey into her own family to investigate the truth behind Khanoum, her late grandmother.

The film will be released in September 2011, Asbarez.com reported.

Suzanne Khardalian is an independent filmmaker and writer. She studied journalism in Beirut and Paris and worked as a journalist in Paris until 1985 when she started to work on films. She also holds a Masters Degree in International Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tuft’s University and contributes with articles to different journals. She has directed more than twenty films that have been shown both in Europe and the US.