In the AGBU WebTalk entitled ‘Aurora Mardiganian: Survivor, Witness, Activist’, Film faculty member Marie-Aude Baronian offers a portrait of Aurora as a pioneer and activist, a young woman who having survived the unimaginable violence of the Genocide wrote a memoir to tell her story and the story of her people, then went on to play her own role in Ravished Armenia, a 1919 Hollywood production that became the first ever film to depict genocide. In another AGBU WebTalk entitled ‘Ravished Armenia: Representing Genocide in Early American Cinema’ Baronian explores the implications of this film, the making of it, its impact at the time, and the challenges of representing violence and mass atrocity through cinema. The animated documentary, Aurora’s Sunrise (2022), directed by Inna Sahakyan, is screening in selected Dutch film theatres from Monday, April 24, Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

Watch WebTalk 1: Aurora Mardiganian: Survivor, Witness, Activist
Watch WebTalk 2: Ravished Armenia: Representing Genocide in Early American Cinema
Watch the radio broadcast (De Nieuws BV) about Aurora’s Sunrise