Armenian Genocide: Filmmaker Apo Torosyan to present "The Morgenthau Story"

PanARMENIAN.Net - Descended from survivors of the Armenian Genocide, filmmaker Apo Torosyan hopes his art transforms prejudice and hate into tolerance and compassion.



Growing up in Turkey, he learned his father's parents had both starved to death after the genocidal massacres of 1915.



Yet when Torosyan screens his newest film Wednesday in the Framingham Library in Massachusetts, it will honor a man who fought oppression at great personal risk while refusing to preach hate, Daily News reports.



His hour-long film, "The Morgenthau Story," was shown on Wednesday, April 1 in the Costin Room of the library in Framingham (US). "I'm trying to reach out and warn people genocide is still with us today," said Torosyan. "Too often we don't see it. But when you say 'us' and 'them,' you're already prejudging people."



A shorter version of his film will be shown on April 23 in Peabody City Hall.



The son of a Greek mother and Armenian father, Torosyan earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts in the 1960s.



He has exhibited his rich, moody paintings in more than 40 solo and 20 group shows in Europe and North America. His paintings are in the permanent collections of several museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in Bordeaux, France, the Armenian Library and Museum of America in Watertown, Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, and the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg.



Now 67, Torosyan has made seven documentaries, including four dealing with aspects of the genocide and three others he describes as philosophic "meditations." Since immigrating to the United States in 1986, he fears he can't return to Turkey because on an earlier visit he expressed his opinion about the Armenian Genocide, which puts him in danger of imprisonment.



Torosyan's documentary incorporates interviews with the three descendants of Henry Morgenthau Sr., ambassador to Constantinople from 1913 to 1916, and archival footage about Turkish oppression of the Armenian minority.



He credits Morgenthau for trying to alert the world to the Ottoman massacres of Armenians and other Christians and later, as chairman of the Greek Resettlement Commission, saving thousands after the 1922 Smyrna massacre.



Torosyan said his films present history objectively so future generations can recognize the symptoms of ethnic, religious and racial prejudice before they take effect. "I believe history should be known so we don't forget the past," he said. "I'm trying to reach out to youth in high school and college. They should know what happened."