NEW PUBLICATION
“The art of story and the freedom of storytelling”
Author: Suzanne Khardalian
Published by Dramatic Institute, Stockholm 2009
There are not too many documentaries and especially auteur documentaries about the Armenian Genocide. But there are far less works connected with the filming of those who had survived the Genocide.
The new work by Suzanne Khardalian is devoted to the issues and problems of this kind of filming.
The filming of those who had survived the Genocide implies the work with the live, memories, language, splinters and fragments of the inner world, which can hardly be narrated independently, the separate elements of storytelling such as time and place, the cultural basis.
Danish writer Karen Blixen said: “All the anguishes of our live can be apprehensible only when we can turn those sufferings into a story”.
The storytelling, story can be used to explore the inexpressible conditions, to make new ideas acceptable.
In every story there are three main elements, principles: everyone knows from the childhood that stories usually begin with words “Once upon a time”. Gradually the storyteller presents the twists and turns of the plot, expands it. Here it is necessary to present clearly all the interested parties, conflict, collision, purpose, demand, expectations and, especially, the aim.
But all the elements necessary for the successful storytelling are almost absent and there are no traces of them when we want to present to the coming generations the odyssey of the Armenian who had survived the Genocide by miracle.
The history of the Armenian who had survived the Genocide has no beginning, middle or end. How can one under such conditions reconstruct the whole from the splinters? In fact the life of such a person is far from the smooth stream of the river; it is characterized by one unique reality. The life before the Genocide, the story about the lost world where even the place names of the cities, villages had been lost forever, the language, different dialects of the Armenian had been annihilated.
Then the Genocide: quite a different world – unlawful and unprecedented. That was the period which turned upside down all the accepted social and civilization criteria. That was the world where words lose their true meaning, where famine, thirst, desert, burning sun and other common words are not perceived as such.
And, naturally, there is the third post-Genocidal period which in fact is the hostage of the previous two.
The Armenian who had survived the Genocide is also a hostage: up to the end he stays at the land which is his motherland, the lost motherland, desert, burial ground, the filed of death; at the land which being so concrete is, at the same time, so abstract.
Cinema is the art where the perceived and visible should firstly reach the spectator and to influence him. The story of the Armenian who had survived the Genocide with all its inhuman details is a challenge to the film director.
The study by Suzanne Khardalian is an attempt to answer those questions.
Having 25 year’s experience in the cinematographic art under her belt Suzanne Khardalian crystallize a kind of methodology of work with people who had survived the Genocide and whose inner world is irreparably traumatized.
The book was published in Stockholm in 2009 by Dramatiska Institutet. The picture of Der Zor – the place of lost illusions – is placed on the cover.
The Swidish title of the book is Berättandets Befrielse: Att filma överlevande från det armeniska folkmordet”, Suzanne Khardalian, Stockholm 2009, skriftserie 9-09.
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