Filmmaker to speak on digitization of Genocide survivor accounts

PanARMENIAN.Net - On April 13, acclaimed filmmaker Dr. Carla Garapedian will give a lecture entitled “The Digital Revolution: Armenian Genocide Survivor Testimonies and the Shoah Visual History Archive” at the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) Center in Belmont, The Armenian Weekly reports.

The lecture will be co-sponsored by the Armenian Film Foundation (AFF), of which Garapedian is a Board member, and NAASR; and it will be in memory of Dr. J. Michael Hagopian (1913-2010), the founder of the AFF and NAASR’s first Board member for California (1959-65).

Garapedian will discuss the new ways Armenian Genocide survivor and witness testimonies are being made available to universities around the world via the Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive. Founded by filmmaker Steven Spielberg, the Shoah Foundation contains 52,000 Holocaust survivor video interviews and is now adding testimonies from other genocides, including the Armenian Genocide. Dr. J. Michael Hagopian’s 400 filmed survivor interviews will be the first of the Armenian Genocide testimonies to be included in this digital collection. Garapedian, the project leader for the Armenian Film Foundation’s digitization effort, will give a demonstration of the powerful search engine, and discuss the challenges of presenting survivor information via the internet.

Garapedian is the director of the film “Screamers,” which was widely credited with helping to change the public debate on recognition of the Armenian Genocide in 2006 and 2007. Other films include “Lifting the Veil,” about the brutal treatment of women in Afghanistan, and “Iran Undercover,” about the underground student movement in Iran, which won the Edward R. Murrow Award in 2005 as part of the PBS Frontline World series. She worked closely with J. Michael Hagopian on his “Witnesses” trilogy.

Garapedian earned a Ph.D. in international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science before working as a producer, director, and correspondent based in London. She is the recipient of the Armin T. Wegner Humanitarian Award and the ABGU Generation Next Community Hero Award, and was recently given the Clara Barton Medal of Gratitude from the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute.