Grandma’s Tattoos to be screened, discussed in Glendale

PanARMENIAN.Net - Director Suzanne Khardalian will discuss her film, Grandma’s Tattoos, following a screening of the film on Friday, December 2, 2011, at the Glendale Public Library Auditorium.

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 Master’s Degree in International Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University and contributes articles to different journals. She has directed more than twenty films that have been shown both in Europe and the US.

“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.

“Grandma’s Tattoos” is a film 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.

The program is organized by the Glendale and Burbank chapters of the Armenian National Committee-Western Region and Asbarez Daily newspaper and is sponsored by The Glendale Public library, Asbarez reported.