Der Dokumentarfilm diaspurk ist ein Portrait der armenischen Diaspora in Deutschland. Wir haben in mehrerer Hinsicht eine besondere Ausgangssituation für ein solches Portrait: Das christliche Armenien und Deutschland verbindet eine lange Freundschaft und einen, durch die gemeinsame christliche Prägung, regen kulturellen Austausch. Zudem sind die Berührungspunkte zu der großen türkischen Minderheit in Deutschland häufiger als in vielen anderen Ländern gegeben, was für viel Konfrontation und Konfliktpotential sorgt.
Auch die teilweise Verschmelzung beider Kulturen, der armenischen und der deutschen, ist bei diesem Fokus interessant. Da in jeder Generation der Diaspora Elemente der armenischen Kultur weitergetragen werden, bleibt die kulturelle Identität auch fernab des Ursprungslandes bestehen.
Identitätsstiftende Faktoren der armenischen Gemeinschaft sind unter anderem der traumatisch nachwirkende Genozid von 1915-1918 und das fortführen armenischen Lebens im Exil. Außerdem können Armenier auf eine lange Geschichte, die das frühe Christentum einschließt und von einer Hochkultur geprägt ist, zurückgreifen. Des Weiteren sind ein frühes Alphabet, eine eigene Schrift, besondere Musikinstrumente – wie der Duduk – und Musikgrößen, symbolgewordene Elemente wie der Granatapfel, wie auch mündlich überlieferte Erinnerungen und Erzählungen identitätsstiftend und vereinen die Armenier weltweit. Die Identität einer Diaspora begründet sich vorwiegend in grundlegenden Bereichen wie der Sprache, traditionellen Festen und religiöser Zugehörigkeit. Diese Elemente zu vergegenwärtigen und auszuleben macht das Leben der Diasporagemeinschaft aus, die sich in lokalen Gemeindezentren zusammen findet. Doch worin besteht die armenische Identität und das starke Bindungsgefühl, wenn die Sprache und die Bräuche der Heimat der Vorfahren unbekannt geblieben sind, wenn kein Kontakt zu etwaigen Gemeinden besteht? Woher kommt in der Fremde das Gefühl armenisch zu sein? Woher die Sehnsucht nach dem Ararat und des einstigen Armeniens?
Ein umfassendes Bild der armenischen Kultur wird mit den Mitteln des Interviews, sowie mit szenischen Darstellungen in diaspurk gezeichnet. Dabei verzichtet der Film auf das natürliche Umfeld der Protagonisten.
Der Fokus liegt in den Interviews ganz klar auf dem Sprachlichen, denn nur die Sprache belegt die armenische Geschichte, nur in Erzählungen stiftet sich Identität. Zusätzlich werden Episoden welche für die Armenier symbolstarken Charakter haben in Szene gesetzt. Armenische Kultur in Form von Musik, Tanz, Geschichte. Durch die hohe ästhetische Umsetzung der Szenen, sollen auch potentielle Interessenten, die sonst keinen Bezug zum Filmthema hätten, angesprochen werden. Dem Film ist an einer breiten Öffentlichkeit gelegen. In einem gewissen Maße steht das Projekt im Sinne der Aufklärung zum Thema selbst.
Die Idee zu einem Dokumentarfilm über die Armenier und ihre Geschichte entstand bereits 2010. Knapp 100 Jahre nach dem Genozid soll sich dieser Film mit der Frage auseinandersetzen, welche Auswirkungen eine so traumatische Erfahrung auf ein Volk der Überlebenden und deren Nachkommen haben kann. Vor allem wenn kaum über die Vorfälle in der Öffentlichkeit geredet wurde, werden kann und der Genozid selbst als historische Tatsache nicht anerkannt ist. Wie entfaltete sich die transgene rationelle Weitergabe von Traumata im armenischen Volk bis in unsere Zeit?
Mit diesen Fragen starteten Jessica Mirjam Angstenberger und Linda Meier – selbst armenischer Abstammung – das Dokumentarfilmprojekt diaspurk. Anfang 2011 wurde zunächst zu diesem Zwecke die Filmproduktionsfirma mittwochabend produktion gegründet. Nach dem Teaserdreh für diaspurk im September 2011 ist die mittwochabend produktion mittlerweile zu einem kleinen Team von engagierten Mitarbeitern herangewachsen.
Mehr hier: diaspurk.de
Showing posts with label Diaspora. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Diaspora. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Thursday, March 08, 2012
VORTRÄGE: Silvia de Carvalho lädt wieder ein nach Wien ins Informationszentrums für Zentralasien und Südkaukasien
Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, liebe Freunde und Freundinnen des IZK,
ein neues Semester steht vor der Tür und ich freue mich Ihnen heute unser neues Programm präsentieren zu dürfen.
Neben Vorträgen und einem Seminar ist auch eine Führung im Mechitharistenkloster geplant.
Ich würde mich freuen, Sie zahlreich bei unseren Veranstaltungen begrüßen zu dürfen.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Ihre Silvia de Carvalho
Mag. Silvia de Carvalho
Leiterin des Informationszentrums für Zentralasien und Südkaukasien
Österreichische Orient-Gesellschaft Hammer-Purgstall
Orient-Akademie
A-1010 Wien
Dominikanerbastei 6/6
www.orient-gesellschaft.at
Österreichische Orient-Gesellschaft Hammer-Purgstall
Orient-Akademie
A-1010 Wien
Dominikanerbastei 6/6
www.orient-gesellschaft.at
+++
VORTRÄGE DES IZK IM SOMMERSEMESTER 2012
Donnerstag, 15. März 2012, 18:30 Uhr
Dr.in Jasmine Dum-Tragut
Armenologin und Sprachwissenschaftlerin
Armenische Diaspora im Umbruch
Eintritt: € 4,- (€ 2,-)
Montag, 19. März 2012, 18:30 Uhr
Mag.a Amieke Bouma
Historikerin
The Ruhnama and National Ideology in Turkmenistan
(Vortrag in englischer Sprache)
Eintritt: € 4,- (€ 2,-)
Donnerstag, 29. März 2012, 18:30 Uhr
Mag.a Andrea Weiss
Ethnologin und Politikwissenschaftlerin
Leben an und mit der georgisch-abchasischen Waffenstillstandslinie
Eintritt: € 4,- (€ 2,-)
Mittwoch, 18. April 2012, 16:00 Uhr. (Treffpunkt 15:45)
Führung im Mechitharistenkloster
Einführung in die Geschichte der Mechitharisten von Dr.in Jasmine Dum-Tragut.
Anschließend Besichtigung von Kirche, Kloster, Museum und Bibliothek
Führung: Dr.in Jasmine Dum-Tragut und Pater Vahan
Eintritt und Führung: € 10,- (€ 8,-)
Anmeldung bis 16. 4. unter: silvia.carvalho@orient-gesellschaft.at
Donnerstag, 19. April 2012, 18:30 Uhr
Dipl.-Geogr.in Fanny Kreczi
Anthropogeographin
Pamir im Wandel
Eintritt: € 4,- (€ 2,-)
Donnerstag, 3. Mai 2012, 18:30 Uhr
Mag. Matthäus Radner
Zentralasien/Kaukasusspezialist
Interessen & Einflüsse von Supermächten in Zentralasien mit Fokus auf Kirgisistan
Eintritt: € 4,- (€ 2,-)
Donnerstag, 10.5.2012: 18:00 – 21:00 Uhr, Freitag, 11.5.2012: 18:00 – 21:00 Uhr,
Samstag, 12.5.2012: 9:00 – 17:00 Uhr
Dr.in Andrea Strasser
MMag. Siegfried Wöber
Prof. Dr. Gerhard Mangott
Seminar: Der Südkaukasus – Im Spannungsfeld zwischen Europa, Russland und dem
Iran
Donnerstag, 24. Mai 2012, 18:30 Uhr
MMag.a Daniela Blecha, Mag.a Andrea Götzelmann, IOM Wien - International Organization
for Migration
Unterstützte freiwillige Rückkehr und Reintegration in Georgien – Herausforderungen und
Chancen
Eintritt: € 4,- (€ 2,-)
Montag, 4. Juni 2012, 18:30 Uhr
Mag. Till Mostowlansky
Zentralasienwissenschaftler
Muslimische Identitäten in Tadschikistan
Eintritt: € 4,- (€ 2,-)
Donnerstag, 14. Juni 2012, 18:30 Uhr
Mag. Johannes Wetzinger
Politikwissenschaftler
Russlands Politik im postsowjetischen Südkaukasus
Eintritt: € 4,- (€ 2,-)
Alle Vorträge finden im Klubsaal der
Österreichische Orient-Gesellschaft Hammer-Purgstall
A-1010 Wien
Dominikanerbastei 6/6
statt.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
DIASPORA: Armenian Festival in Canada to Highlight Komitas (hetq.am)
The Third Moncton Armenian Festival will kick off in the Canadian city November 26 to 29, and this year the focus will be on Komitas, Armenia’s legendary composer, ethnographer, poet and specialist in folk dance and the study of music.Four days will be filled with activities and discoveries of the world of Komitas: a big opening show, three exhibitions, two concerts and a mini-film festival.Organizers are promising a feast for the senses leading to understanding, sharing and communicating about Armenia, whose rich but tormented history dates back at least 2,000 years.The festival was initiated by members of the Maritimes Armenian Association, which unites about 200 families in the Maritime provinces.Each year’s festival has been planned to take the public on a different voyage of discovery – from the origins of the great historical Armenia to the contemporary Republic of Armenia and the grand Armenian diaspora in the world.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
ARTICLE: Long in diaspora, Armenians return home
© AP 2008-06-08 02:37:29 - YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) - What would prompt a young family to abandon a comfortable life and move to a poor country where running water is still a luxury for many, politics are messy and the threat of war looms large.
For Aline Masrlian, 41, her husband, Gevork Sarian, and their two children, it was their motherland calling.
«It is something special when you live in your own land,» said Masrlian, who moved here after her family had lived for generations in Syria.
Lured by the economic opportunities in a fast changing country and the lure of home, some people from Armenia's vast diaspora are moving to the land that their ancestors had long kept alive as little more than an idea. Longtime residents, meanwhile, are no longer fleeing the country in large numbers.
While 3.2 million people live in this landlocked Caucasus mountain nation _ the smallest of the ex-Soviet republics _ an estimated 5.7 million Armenians reside abroad. The largest disappears are in Russia (2 million), the United States (1.4 million), Georgia (460,000) and France (450,000), according to government data.
Most of the diaspora, like Masrlian's family, are descendants of those who fled the killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians in Ottoman Turkey during World War I _ a tragedy Armenia wants to be recognized as genocide but modern Turkey insists was an inherent part of the war's violence.
Much later, others ran away from the economic collapse that Armenia suffered following the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, when electricity was available only several hours a day, people had to chop down trees for heat, and bread and butter were strictly rationed.The devastating conflict with neighboring Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, in which over 30,000 people have died, compounded the exodus. An estimated 500,000 people left the country in 1992-94, many heading to Russia.
However, over the past four years Armenia has registered an overall population inflow of 33,200, the first positive trend since gaining independence in 1991 with the Soviet collapse, said Vahan Bakhshetian, a migration expert with the Territorial Management Ministry. While it's difficult to tell how many Armenians are returning permanently, Bakhshetian said the trend offers hope.
«We are now seeing many of those who had left return,» said Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Karapetian.
Among the returnees are many from the Russian diaspora. Some are lured back by economic improvements here, while others are escaping growing xenophobia in Russia, where attacks on dark-skinned people from the Caucasus are frequent.
Garik Hayrapetyan of the United Nations' Population Fund said Armenians also are no longer leaving in large numbers, but he cautioned that the emerging repatriation will not be sustained without economic and political progress.
For many, the country's biggest asset is its rich cultural heritage. Two millennia ago, Armenia was a vast kingdom stretching between the Black and Caspian seas. Eventually it was divided and absorbed by bigger states, including the Ottoman empire and czarist Russia, and later the Soviet Union.
Armenians like to brag that Noah's Ark came to rest in their country, on the biblical Mount Ararat _ though the snowcapped mountain is now part of Turkey, overlooking Yerevan. The country is said to be the first state to adopt Christianity as its religion.
Still, in many ways Armenia remains an unlikely place to attract returnees. Despite economic progress in recent years, over a quarter of the population lives in poverty and the average monthly wage is a meager $275.
Outside aid is crucial. Diaspora Armenians send millions of dollars for investment and aid projects, and much of the population survives on individual money transfers from relatives abroad. The International Monetary Fund estimates that remittances make up 10 percent of the country's economy.
Those sending money are moved by the same love of country that draws Armenians back. James Tufenkian, an Armenian-American, has invested some $30 million in reviving the traditional carpet industry _ largely destroyed in the Soviet era _ building hotels and running charity efforts. Today, he provides jobs to over 1,000 people here.
Tufenkian, 47, said he decided to help after his first visit at the height of Armenia's economic decline in the early 1990s.
«I felt like I had a chance to do something to improve people's lives, that it was my homeland calling,» Tufenkian said in a telephone interview from New York.
Today, Yerevan is slowly transforming itself from a run-down city into a vibrant, modern capital. The downtown boasts Western boutiques, expensive restaurants and young people in trendy outfits.
Yet the rest of the city, perched on steep hills, is a bleak mix of Soviet-era concrete apartment blocks and dilapidated two- and three-story houses with laundry hanging on balconies. The air is heavily polluted, mostly from the exhaust of the battered Soviet-era cars that clog the city. Some districts in Yerevan continue to have shortages of running water, which were common in the 1990s.
While Armenia is considered one of the freer countries among post-Soviet republics, its fragile hold on democracy became apparent earlier this year. Eight people were killed in clashes between government forces and opposition activists protesting election results. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict also keeps tensions high.
But ask Gevork Sarian about life in Armenia, and the emigre who returned from Syria with his wife and children talks more about finding a homeland than about the wider political climate.
The bearded, smiling Sarian attended university in Yerevan in the early 1980s and said he always wanted to return. The family moved back in 1998, and he started several successful businesses, including a lingerie store run by his wife.
Now 46, Sarian said he had felt separated from his Syrian neighbors. «Even if they look at you in a good way, you are still a stranger _ this is the feeling of Armenian diaspora everywhere,» he said.
His 15-year-old son Ardag added that in Armenia «you feel that it is your country.
Repatriation wasn't as easy for Aline Masrlian, the wife in the family. She recalled a middle-class life in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, with running water available 24 hours a day and the markets full of fruits and vegetables. In Yerevan, when the family first arrived, water was on just two hours a day, sometimes the only bread she could find was stale, and she missed the job she had loved, as a construction engineer.
But 10 years later, sitting in a new, spacious apartment decorated with family photos, Aline said she has no regrets. «I decided that this is my country.
More recent returnee Zorair Atabekian, 36, hopes for a similar future. He came back in 2005 after five years in Canada, homesick and hoping to go into business. Though he still earns far less selling jewelry in Yerevan than he did running an apartment design firm in Montreal, he said he knew his decision would eventually prove right.
«Today this country offers a lot of possibilities,» he said. «That is why many diaspora are returning here to start up businesses.
print version >>>
For Aline Masrlian, 41, her husband, Gevork Sarian, and their two children, it was their motherland calling.
«It is something special when you live in your own land,» said Masrlian, who moved here after her family had lived for generations in Syria.
Lured by the economic opportunities in a fast changing country and the lure of home, some people from Armenia's vast diaspora are moving to the land that their ancestors had long kept alive as little more than an idea. Longtime residents, meanwhile, are no longer fleeing the country in large numbers.
While 3.2 million people live in this landlocked Caucasus mountain nation _ the smallest of the ex-Soviet republics _ an estimated 5.7 million Armenians reside abroad. The largest disappears are in Russia (2 million), the United States (1.4 million), Georgia (460,000) and France (450,000), according to government data.
Most of the diaspora, like Masrlian's family, are descendants of those who fled the killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians in Ottoman Turkey during World War I _ a tragedy Armenia wants to be recognized as genocide but modern Turkey insists was an inherent part of the war's violence.
Much later, others ran away from the economic collapse that Armenia suffered following the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, when electricity was available only several hours a day, people had to chop down trees for heat, and bread and butter were strictly rationed.The devastating conflict with neighboring Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, in which over 30,000 people have died, compounded the exodus. An estimated 500,000 people left the country in 1992-94, many heading to Russia.
However, over the past four years Armenia has registered an overall population inflow of 33,200, the first positive trend since gaining independence in 1991 with the Soviet collapse, said Vahan Bakhshetian, a migration expert with the Territorial Management Ministry. While it's difficult to tell how many Armenians are returning permanently, Bakhshetian said the trend offers hope.
«We are now seeing many of those who had left return,» said Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Karapetian.
Among the returnees are many from the Russian diaspora. Some are lured back by economic improvements here, while others are escaping growing xenophobia in Russia, where attacks on dark-skinned people from the Caucasus are frequent.
Garik Hayrapetyan of the United Nations' Population Fund said Armenians also are no longer leaving in large numbers, but he cautioned that the emerging repatriation will not be sustained without economic and political progress.
For many, the country's biggest asset is its rich cultural heritage. Two millennia ago, Armenia was a vast kingdom stretching between the Black and Caspian seas. Eventually it was divided and absorbed by bigger states, including the Ottoman empire and czarist Russia, and later the Soviet Union.
Armenians like to brag that Noah's Ark came to rest in their country, on the biblical Mount Ararat _ though the snowcapped mountain is now part of Turkey, overlooking Yerevan. The country is said to be the first state to adopt Christianity as its religion.
Still, in many ways Armenia remains an unlikely place to attract returnees. Despite economic progress in recent years, over a quarter of the population lives in poverty and the average monthly wage is a meager $275.
Outside aid is crucial. Diaspora Armenians send millions of dollars for investment and aid projects, and much of the population survives on individual money transfers from relatives abroad. The International Monetary Fund estimates that remittances make up 10 percent of the country's economy.
Those sending money are moved by the same love of country that draws Armenians back. James Tufenkian, an Armenian-American, has invested some $30 million in reviving the traditional carpet industry _ largely destroyed in the Soviet era _ building hotels and running charity efforts. Today, he provides jobs to over 1,000 people here.
Tufenkian, 47, said he decided to help after his first visit at the height of Armenia's economic decline in the early 1990s.
«I felt like I had a chance to do something to improve people's lives, that it was my homeland calling,» Tufenkian said in a telephone interview from New York.
Today, Yerevan is slowly transforming itself from a run-down city into a vibrant, modern capital. The downtown boasts Western boutiques, expensive restaurants and young people in trendy outfits.
Yet the rest of the city, perched on steep hills, is a bleak mix of Soviet-era concrete apartment blocks and dilapidated two- and three-story houses with laundry hanging on balconies. The air is heavily polluted, mostly from the exhaust of the battered Soviet-era cars that clog the city. Some districts in Yerevan continue to have shortages of running water, which were common in the 1990s.
While Armenia is considered one of the freer countries among post-Soviet republics, its fragile hold on democracy became apparent earlier this year. Eight people were killed in clashes between government forces and opposition activists protesting election results. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict also keeps tensions high.
But ask Gevork Sarian about life in Armenia, and the emigre who returned from Syria with his wife and children talks more about finding a homeland than about the wider political climate.
The bearded, smiling Sarian attended university in Yerevan in the early 1980s and said he always wanted to return. The family moved back in 1998, and he started several successful businesses, including a lingerie store run by his wife.
Now 46, Sarian said he had felt separated from his Syrian neighbors. «Even if they look at you in a good way, you are still a stranger _ this is the feeling of Armenian diaspora everywhere,» he said.
His 15-year-old son Ardag added that in Armenia «you feel that it is your country.
Repatriation wasn't as easy for Aline Masrlian, the wife in the family. She recalled a middle-class life in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, with running water available 24 hours a day and the markets full of fruits and vegetables. In Yerevan, when the family first arrived, water was on just two hours a day, sometimes the only bread she could find was stale, and she missed the job she had loved, as a construction engineer.
But 10 years later, sitting in a new, spacious apartment decorated with family photos, Aline said she has no regrets. «I decided that this is my country.
More recent returnee Zorair Atabekian, 36, hopes for a similar future. He came back in 2005 after five years in Canada, homesick and hoping to go into business. Though he still earns far less selling jewelry in Yerevan than he did running an apartment design firm in Montreal, he said he knew his decision would eventually prove right.
«Today this country offers a lot of possibilities,» he said. «That is why many diaspora are returning here to start up businesses.
print version >>>
Monday, February 05, 2007
The Yezidi Kurds and Assyrians of Georgia: The Problem of Diasporas and Integration into Contemporary Society
Iraklii Chikhladze, Executive Director,
International Eurokavkazasia Association, Tbilisi, Georgia
Giga Chikhladze, Executive Director,
Profile Journal, Tbilisi, Georgia
We have deliberately selected the Assyrians and the Yezidi Kurds from among numerousethnic minorities living in Georgia as a subject of this article because both have no independent national-autonomous entities except their autonomies in the north and northeast of Iraq. This shows that the diasporas cannot communicate with their historical homeland at the state level. At the same time, the expected state structure of postwar Iraq may greatly affect the life of the Kurdish and Assyrian communities in Georgia that share some of the problems with other ethnic minorities and have specific concerns of their own. There are indications that these communities have stepped up their activeness partly in response to the Georgian domestic problems and partly because of the coming geopolitical changes in the Middle East. The Southern Caucasus has been serving as home to the majority of the Kurds and Assyrians since the early 20th century when their ancestors fled Turkey.
Today their diasporas may gain more weight in the context of possible geopolitical changes that are expected soon.
More: http://www.zindamagazine.com/html/archives/2005/9.24.05/index_sat.php
Onnik Krikorian is towering with his themes and photo about the yezidi and kurds ...
Look there: Kurds & Yezidi
Iraklii Chikhladze, Executive Director,
International Eurokavkazasia Association, Tbilisi, Georgia
Giga Chikhladze, Executive Director,
Profile Journal, Tbilisi, Georgia
We have deliberately selected the Assyrians and the Yezidi Kurds from among numerousethnic minorities living in Georgia as a subject of this article because both have no independent national-autonomous entities except their autonomies in the north and northeast of Iraq. This shows that the diasporas cannot communicate with their historical homeland at the state level. At the same time, the expected state structure of postwar Iraq may greatly affect the life of the Kurdish and Assyrian communities in Georgia that share some of the problems with other ethnic minorities and have specific concerns of their own. There are indications that these communities have stepped up their activeness partly in response to the Georgian domestic problems and partly because of the coming geopolitical changes in the Middle East. The Southern Caucasus has been serving as home to the majority of the Kurds and Assyrians since the early 20th century when their ancestors fled Turkey.
Today their diasporas may gain more weight in the context of possible geopolitical changes that are expected soon.
More: http://www.zindamagazine.com/html/archives/2005/9.24.05/index_sat.php
Onnik Krikorian is towering with his themes and photo about the yezidi and kurds ...
Look there: Kurds & Yezidi
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