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‘The Promise’ Premieres In New York With Full Cast, Filmmakers & UN Dignitaries

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BY HOOSHERE BEZDIKIAN

NEW YORK—The highly anticipated feature film The Promise made its New York City debut on April 18th at the Paris Theater on 58th Street. The cast came out in full force as Christian Bale, Charlotte Le Bon, Oscar Isaac, Angela Sarafyan, James Cromwell and Chris Cornell made their way down the red carpet, alongside director/co-writer Terry George and several of the film’s producers, helmed by Eric Esrailian (Survival Pictures). Also in attendance was the evening’s co-host, Ambassador Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, Permanent Representative of Armenia to the United Nations, and several other respected UN dignitaries.

Producer Eric Esrailian passionately described the mission of the film. “First of all, we wanted to tell a beautiful story and draw people in and raise awareness about the history of the Armenian people and the Armenian Genocide. We know that Armenians are not defined by genocide, but we want the genocide to be recognized and to not be forgotten.”

Set against the backdrop of the Armenian Genocide, The Promise centers around a young Armenian woman, Ana Khesarian (Charlotte Le Bon) who leaves Paris to return to her homeland, where she gets entangled with AP journalist Chris Myers (Christian Bale) and then meets Armenian medical student, Mikael Boghosian (Oscar Isaac), with whom she unexpectedly finds common ground. The film is, at its core, a love story—intentionally designed as such to make the film more appealing and accessible to broader movie-going audiences.

As James Cromwell, who plays Henry Morgenthau, United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire describes, “The love story is a way of getting people to begin the process, to feel for the characters, and then understand… can we not have compassion for people who are suffering around the world today? If we can have compassion for them, we can have compassion for the Armenians. If we can have compassion for the Armenians, then we have compassion for the Native Americans, and it goes on… it’s to open the heart.”

Esrailian addressed the importance of combatting the aggressive denial of the genocide on behalf of the Turkish government, while simultaneously depicting the resilience of the Armenian people. “As long as there is deep denial,” Esrailian explains, “our identity and the awareness of our culture will be viewed through a different lens, and it’s important to have that recognition and awareness while moving forward at the same time. Armenians have not stood still and hoped for genocide recognition. This is the mission and the message from the film – the take home is not the genocide – it’s where we are today; that Armenians have persevered, have thrived, have contributed to society.”

This very survival and perseverance is why Esrailian chose to include the Armenian flag in the official movie poster, a choice that some have criticized, citing that the flag didn’t exist in 1915. Esrailian rebuts, “That’s the type of thinking that doesn’t help the Armenian people. The genocide reflects the past, and the flag represents the future. When is the next time the Armenian flag is going to be on the poster of a major motion picture?”

Ambassador Zohrab Mnatsakanyan anticipated, “There will be many judgements about the artistic value of the film” and went on to emphasize “what is important about this film is that it’s a building block in the big construction of preventing genocide. This is a reminder that atrocities are still a risk before humanity. We as Armenians have experienced it, and I think we all bear moral duty before humanity to prevent genocide.”

To that same end, Esrailian stressed “Our goal is to draw attention to the parallels of human rights abuses in the world today, the relevance to the world today, to show that Armenians also care about other people all around the world, including in Turkey, and that people need to learn the lessons from the Armenian Genocide so that we can help others in the world who are at risk.”

“We have to show that the denialists and people who are complicit in human rights abuse – and many of those people are in the same camp – are using the same tactics today to commit human rights abuses that they did to the Armenian people in 1915 and beyond. So it’s really important to draw attention to why people are denying, what are the tactics they’re using, demonstrate that what happened to the Armenian people unfortunately is not a unique situation – we’re connected to all these other groups that have suffered atrocities as well – and that we need to basically come together to once and for all say never forget and then do everything we can for the ‘never again’ component of it.”

Bringing The Promise to the big screen was no easy task. Christian Bale was drawn to the project for that very reason. “I learned about the efforts to get a major film made, and how over the decades it’s really been thwarted. Kirk Kerkorian himself, owning, running MGM was not able to do it at that time.” He went on to admit that “embarrassingly, and I think quite commonly, I learned about the Armenian Genocide really around the same time that the hundredth anniversary was happening, and it was stunning to me that such an atrocity is largely unknown. It’s this great unknown genocide, but it’s modern history. And the consequences – or lack of consequences – for this probably provoked many of the other genocides we’ve seen since.”

He found himself drawing parallels to current events: “And I was reading the script, Musa Dagh, the seizure on the mountain, and I was watching the news, and there were the Yazidis under siege being slaughtered, and it just made me realize how relevant this story was.”

La times Review: ‘The Promise,’ an epic melodrama set during the Armenian genocide, falls frustratingly flat

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By Katie Walsh,

History is rife with horrific events that somehow manage to reveal true humanity and heroism. Many of these events are underreported, underrepresented and misunderstood, such as the Armenian genocide — the extermination of 1.5 million Armenians and other ethnic and religious minorities by the Ottoman Empire, starting in 1915.

Knowledge of this genocide isn’t universal, and Turkey, the successor nation of the Ottoman Empire, still refuses to acknowledge it. The epic melodrama “The Promise,” based on these events, seeks to remedy popular understanding of the horror. It’s a noble undertaking that only partially succeeds.

Written by Robin Swicord and director Terry George, “The Promise” has all the trappings of a romantic epic — movie stars, love triangles, exotic destinations. It boasts Oscar Isaac, Christian Bale and gorgeous European locations, plus experienced talent behind the camera, so it’s confounding then that “The Promise” falls so flat.

The film is a color-by-numbers wartime drama. Isaac plays Mikael, a young medical student from a small Armenian village, pursuing his fortune in Constantinople. There he befriends a young Turk (Marwan Kenzari) and an American reporter (Bale) and falls in love with a worldly and well-traveled Armenian woman, Ana (Charlotte Le Bon), though he’s promised to a young woman back home. When the Ottomans enter World War I, the group is torn apart by hatred, racism and violence.

‘The Promise’ vs. ‘The Ottoman Lieutenant’: Two Movies Battle Over The Armenian Genocide

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by Alex Ritman , Mia Galuppo

The filmmakers behind the new historical epic, starring Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale, charge that Turkish interests tried to counter their film by creating a competing movie.

The two films — released just over a month apart — look remarkably similar. Both promise sweeping love stories, both boast Hollywood talent, and both are set against the massacre of Armenians in Turkey during and after World War I, a gruesome period of history that led to the creation of one of the dictionary’s most horrific terms, genocide, coined by Raphael Lemkin in the wake of World War II.

But the similarities between The Ottoman Lieutenant, which opened March 20, and The Promise, which arrives in theaters Friday, may be more than just coincidence. In fact, the filmmakers behind The Promise charge that The Ottoman Lieutenant may be part of Turkish efforts to deny that the Armenian Genocide took place.

The Promise, starring Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale and directed by Hotel Rwanda’s Terry George, is the more high-profile of the new features, having received a major marketing push in recent weeks. The project, which Open Road is distributing, was a long-time dream of the late billionaire and MGM owner Kirk Kerkorian, who put up the movie’s massive $100 million budget.

The Ottoman Lieutenant stars Josh Hartnett alongside rising actress Hera Hilmar and features a cameo from Ben Kingsley and was directed by Joseph Rubin, best known for such films as 1987’s The Stepfather and 1991’s Sleeping with the Enemy. Released on March 10 by New York-based Paladin, the film played 216 theaters where it collected less than $150,000 in its first weekend.

The trailers for both films appear to follow the same strategy: Both kick off in dreamy fashion in the sprawling continent-straddling and minaret skylined metropolis of Constantinople (now Istanbul), both offering plenty of iconic Turkish imagery, both taking a violent turn with the outbreak of war and both offering a sizeable degree of melodrama along the way.

But, as the reviews have made clear, there is one major difference between the two films.

Whereas The Promise lays the blame for the Armenian Genocide, the systematic extermination of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians, squarely at the hands of the Ottoman government, a fact almost unanimously acknowledged by historians, The Ottoman Lieutenant offers a more revisionist viewpoint. While it admits that massacres took place, it blames the murderous events on rogue groups of war-ravaged soldiers, presenting them as the unfortunate consequences of the hostilities and not something ordered from up top (in fact, its dashing Turkish soldier hero ultimately puts his life on the line to save a group of Armenian villagers).

That revisionist argument is also the position of the Turkish government, which has, for the past 100 years, vehemently denied that any such genocide took place. And so the creators of The Promise believe that The Ottoman Lieutenant was produced not only in an attempt to blunt some of the impact of The Promise, but they also suspect and are alleging that there may be links between the film and the hardline government of president Recap Erdogan, who won a controversial referendum, granting him more powers, earlier this week. The key figures in the making of The Ottoman Lieutenant did not respond to THR’s requests for comment.

George, speaking with THR, cited the “remarkable’ similarity in the style of the two films, right down to their publicity materials. The Promise producer Eric Esralien echoed that observation, noting The Ottoman Lieutenant’s title treatment “looked exactly the same as ours.” He called the rival film “another alternative fact-type smokescreen” that tries to “confuse people.” Added George, “It’s not hard to see the motivation. Clearly, they had to have gotten wind of us making this film.”

Mike Medavoy, another of The Promise, takes it a step further, alleging that Bilal Erdogan, the 35-year-old son of the Turkish president, had a hand in financing The Ottoman Lieutenant. The movie “was apparently financed by Erdogan’s son,” Medavoy said to THR at the film’s New York premiere earlier this week. “What’s interesting to me is that they felt they needed to make this counter-political argument.”

To explain The Ottoman Lieutenant’s possible connection to the Turkish government, Carla Garapedian, an associate producer on The Promise who works for the non-profit Armenian Film Foundation, first points to a discovery by an organization called Project Save, a Massachusetts-based archive of old Armenian photos. Contacted by The Ottoman Lieutenant’s producers asking to license some images, the curator made some inquiries. “He found that the production was Turkish-financed” says Garapedian. THR has learned that Project Save ultimately declined to license any photos to The Ottoman Lieutenant.

Bilal  Erdogan is believed to have business ties outside the film industry with Yusuf Esenkel, the founder of Eastern Sunrise Film and also a producer of The Ottoman Lieutenant. Esenkel also is a producer of Filinta, a Turkish soap opera (described by one source as “like a crude Ottoman Downton Abbey”) that aired between 2014 and 2016 and believed to be one of the most expensive series on local TV. President Erdogan and his wife are known to have visited the Filinta set, congratulating the entire production team.

Esenkel’s work often seems to downplay some of the most notorious periods of bloodshed in Turkish history. The producer’s small-screen follow-up to Filinta, also produced by Eastern Sunrise Film (or ES Film as it is sometimes called) is another extravagant period series, Payitaht Abulamid, a biopic of Abdulhamid II, the last sultan of Turkey, which began airing in February. Historians outside of Turkey sometimes refer to Abdulhamid as the “Red Sultan,” a nickname he earned due to the well-documented massacres of hundreds of thousands of Armenians that took place during his rule in the late 19th century, a precursor to the eventual genocide that started in 1915. But in the TV show Abdulhamid is depicted as a noble leader forced to do what he must to protect the Ottoman Empire.

It’s not clear what role Esenkal may have played in shaping The Ottoman Lieutenant. He didn’t respond to THR’s queries, nor did others in the creative team, including the U.S.-based producer Stephen Brown (U.S. Marshals, The Devil’s Advocate). Reps for director Rubin explained that he had a “non-disparagement clause” in his contract and wasn’t doing any press for the film.

The only person who did respond to THR was Ron Bareham, the film’s line producer, who said he wasn’t convinced The Ottoman Lieutenant was produced because of The Promise. “There was talk about [The Promise] when we were filming, but this film was started years before,” he says. “ As far as I know, the gestation period was six to eight years.” U.K.-based Bareham, who was brought on at the last moment to replace a previous line producer who left the weekend before production was to have started, admitted that he was mostly unaware of the history – or financing – behind The Ottoman Lieutenant.

George does acknowledge that “[The Ottoman Lieutenant] started shooting, from what I’ve read, before us.”

But there was definitely jockeying for release dates between the two films.

Initially, when it looked as if The Promise would be getting a December 2016 release, it was announced that The Ottoman Lieutenant would be given an Oscar-qualifying run that same month. When it was then officially announced that The Promise would be released April 21, The Ottoman Lieutenant’s U.S. launch was pushed to March 10. The jostling has led to claims from several online commentators that producers have simply been trying to “confuse” U.S. cinemagoers. The Ottoman Lieutenant’s domestic distributor, Paladin Pictures, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

If The Ottoman Lieutenant was, in fact, a Turkish government-funded piece of cinematic propaganda designed to counter The Promise, it didn’t have much impact at the box-office, where it grossed less than $250,000 in its U.S. run.

The Promise is opening in more than 2,000 locations in an attempt reach more hearts and minds, but it, too, appears to be heading into a box-office wall, with tracking predicting an opening weekend of around $4 million. (The producers of The Promise say that profits from the film will go to charity).

But while the existing of two dueling movies might suggest a debate still exists over whether the Armenian Genocide took place, Bale, attending The Promise’s New York premiere, put it simply. “There’s no debate. I really hope this helps, not to fuel more hostilities and accusations, but it does seem to me with the research and knowledge. there really is no question about this happening and it being a genocide.”

–Ashley Lee contributed to this report

Source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/promise-ottoman-lieutenant-two-movies-battle-armenian-genocide-996196

The 1915 deportations depicted in the works of a Turkish painter #ArmenianGenocide

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Turkish painter Arzu Basharan

Turkish painter Arzu Basharan

Turkish painter Arzu Basharan has opened another exhibition entitled “There” to spotlight the topic of deportations starting from the times of the Armenian Genocide in 1915 to the recent cases of forced migration in Syria and Turkey’s Diyarbakir.

Ermenihaber writes, Bashara’s painting style includes distinct dots of color and various accessories applied in patterns to form an image, that transfers the topic of deportation. In an Interview with Turkish medyascope.tv, Basharan has told her exhibition is the record of all the past occurrences related to the Armenian Genocide, Rwanda and Bosnian massacres, as well as the recent developments in Diyarbakir.

The Artist has next stressed that the idea of raising the topic came to her after Hrant Dink’s assassination, adding, the exhibition is not limited down to the tragic events of the 1915, but also covers the human stories of our days in Syria and Diyarbakir, who are forces to leave their houses in search of peace and shelter.

The source adds, that the exhibition at 44 Art Gallery of Istanbul will be open until May 15.

California Senate declares April month of Armenian Genocide Recognition VIDEO

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The California State Senate on April 17 passed Senate Resolution 29 declaring April as a month of Armenian Genocide Recognition, commemorating the Armenian Genocide, calling for Turkey to return historic church properties to rightful congregations and requesting that the United States Government formally recognize the Armenian Genocide, Asbarez reported.

In his floor speech presenting SR 29, State Senator Anthony Portantino outlined the importance of the State Senate’s recognition of the Armenian Genocide for California residents and for the United States. He also shared details of the resilience of the Armenian people by reciting passages from William Saroyan in the Armenian language.

“It is an honor to represent the largest Armenian American community in the country and to be entrusted to appropriately commemorate the Genocide in the State Senate. It is our hope that California’s loud and clear voice once and for all gives Washington and the President the confidence to do the right thing and help people finally have the chance to heal from the horror perpetrated 102 years ago,” commented Portantino.

SR 29 was authored by Portantino and co-authored by the other members of the State Senate California, Armenian & Artsakh Select Committee: Pro Tem Kevin De Leon, Scott Wilk, Tony Mendoza and Josh Newman. Portantino is the Chair of the Select Committee.

In addition to recognizing actress Angela Sarafyan from The Promise on the Senate floor, Portantino and the Senate Select Committee helped facilitate the California Capitol screening of The Promise during Advocacy Day. Academy Award winning Director Terry George from The Promise was hosted at a reception in the State Capitol prior to the passage of SR 29. The State Senate ceremony began with a prayer from Very Reverend Father Dajad Ashekian and Very Reverend Father Pakrad Berjekian. Homenetmen Scouts from Santa Clara Ani Chapter conducted the Pledge of Allegiance and a broad coalition of Armenian American community leaders were introduced by Portantino as part of Advocacy Day during the commemoration.

 

“The Promise” Sets Hollywood Technique Against the Armenian Genocide’s Horrors

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By Alan Scherstuhl,
Terry George’s The Promise has the rare good fortune of turning up in theaters just weeks after another film showed how necessary a movie like this is. The second star-driven war-adventure film of 2017 to set a cross-cultural love triangle against the horror of the Armenian Genocide, The Promise would outclass its forerunner, The Ottoman Lieutenant, even if it weren’t manifestly better in its story and acting and more arresting in its sweep.

The Ottoman Lieutenant, more a romance than a reckoning with history, never quite brings itself to admit that the Armenian Genocide actually happened — instead, it presents the Ottoman Empire in the era of the First World War as a land torn generically by war, one whose people at least had the good fortune to be tended to by Hera Hilmar’s plucky American nurse, who will treat anyone, regardless of which god they serve. Much of that film concerns her dueling suitors, and the final shot is a howler: In the highlands near Mt. Ararat, a parade line of wounded and dying Turks and Armenians lie on their gurneys as the camera cranes out and Hilmar dashes purposefully from one to the next. Civilization has crumbled, faiths are clashing and the Turks have set in motion the extermination of some 1.5 million Armenians, but the movie urges us not to worry — she’s got this.

Nobody’s got the situation under control in The Promise, a handsome but lumpish film whose creators are too honest to lie to us about individual heroism. George and Robin Swicord have also built their screenplay around three conflicted lovers, but here the history overwhelms the romance. Nobody in The Promise has to point out that their love problems don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, because that crazy world is forever trying to kill them and everyone they care about. Rather than sweat over who’s crushing on whom, the protagonists endeavor to survive, offer aid to refugees and let the world know the truth about a campaign of mass murder that, to this day, the Turkish government still won’t officially acknowledge.

Oscar Isaac stars as Michael, an Armenian man who in 1914 leaves his village in the mountains to study medicine in Constantinople. When the killing starts, and Turks are attacking Armenians in the streets (a scene reminiscent of George’s Hotel Rwanda), it takes him agonizing minutes to bring down an assailant. He’s assisted in this by Ana (Charlotte Le Bon), an Armenian ballerina, who chucks cabbages at the killers’ heads. The movie’s an epic, but the characters are human-scaled; their desperate actions are refreshingly un-aestheticized.

Called to arms in the late reels, Michael can’t bring himself to shoot the Turks advancing on an encampment of Armenian refugees. Instead, he dedicates himself to treating the wounded. Principled pacifism here is as noble and moving as it is in Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge, but George handles it in just heartbeats — and without the sense that he’s aroused by the violence the pacifist rejects.

Read more: http://www.villagevoice.com/film/the-promise-sets-hollywood-technique-against-the-terror-of-the-armenian-genocide-9887292

Path to screen for Armenian epic includes evading a knockoff

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By JAKE COYLE, AP Film Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — “The Promise,” the grandest big-screen portrayal ever made about the mass killings of Armenians during World War I, has been rated by more than 111,300 people on IMDb – a remarkable total considering it doesn’t open in theaters until Friday and has thus far been screened only a handful of times publicly.

The passionate reaction is because “The Promise,” a $100-million movie starring Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale, has provoked those who deny that 1.5 million Armenians were massacred between 1915 and 1923 by the Ottoman Empire or that the deaths of Armenians were the result of a policy of genocide. Thousands, many of them in Turkey, have flocked to IMDb to rate the film poorly, sight unseen. Though many countries and most historians call the mass killings genocide, Turkey has aggressively refused that label.

Yet that wasn’t the most audacious sabotage of “The Promise,” a passion project of the late billionaire investor and former MGM owner Kirk Kerkorian.

In March, just a few weeks before “The Promise” was to open, a curiously similar-looking film called “The Ottoman Lieutenant” appeared. Another sweeping romance set during the same era and with a few stars of its own, including Ben Kingsley and Josh Hartnett, “The Ottoman Lieutenant” seemed designed to be confused with “The Promise.” But it was made by Turkish producers and instead broadcast Turkey’s version of the events – that the Armenians were merely collateral damage in World War I. It was the Turkish knockoff version of “The Promise,” minus the genocide.

“It was like a reverse mirror image of us,” said Terry George, director and co-writer of “The Promise.” George, the Irish filmmaker, has some experience in navigating the sensitivities around genocide having previously written and directed 2004’s “Hotel Rwanda,” about the early ’90s Rwandan genocide.

George bought a ticket to see it. “Basically the argument is the Turkish government’s argument, that there was an uprising and it was bad and we had to move these people out of the war zone – which, if applied to the Nazis in Poland would be: ‘Oh, there was an uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto and we need to move these Jews out of the war zone,'” says George. “The film is remarkably similar in terms of structure and look, even.”

The nascent production company behind “The Ottoman Lieutenant,” Eastern Sunrise Productions, did not respond to queries for this article. Critics lambasted the film as “revisionist history” that “glosses over genocide.” Salon wondered , “What is Sir Ben Kingsley doing in ‘The Ottoman Lieutenant?'”

The killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I is widely viewed by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey, however, denies that the deaths constituted genocide, saying the toll has been inflated, and that those killed were victims of war and civil unrest.

While the creation of a rival historical drama is fairly unprecedented, Armenians have a long history of roadblocks in Hollywood. The first film to chronicle the genocide was a 1919 silent called “Ravished Armenia.” In the mid ’30s, MGM began pre-production on an adaptation of Franz Werfel’s “The Forty Days of Musa Dagh,” with Clark Gable to star. But under pressure from the Turkish government, it was scuttled.

Elia Kazan’s “America America” (1963), an immigrant’s odyssey modeled after Kazan’s family’s own experience, began with persecution of Armenians and Greeks. But the films to most capture Armenian persecution have been made outside Hollywood, by international filmmakers like Atom Egoyan (2002’s “Ararat”) and Fatih Akin (2014’s “The Cut”).

“The Promise,” bankrolled by the Kerkorian Foundation, was also made totally outside the studio system. Its makers are donating all proceeds to nonprofit organizations, and intend to use the PG-13-rated film as an education tool in schools. Its release has been timed to the April 24 anniversary of the genocide.

“One of the big things for us was taking the darkness of the Armenian genocide and moving it into the light,” said producer Eric Esrailian, a Los Angeles physician and friend to Kerkorian. “Genocide denial is one phase of genocide. The way systematic denial has tried to crush it and bury the truth for so many years, it’s amazing to see it all come to light now.”

“The Promise” was modeled after epics like “Doctor Zhivago” and “Casablanca,” charting a love story across wartime. Most of the horrors occur off-screen. Kerkorian, who died in 2015, dreamed of a classical treatment that would render the Armenia plight with the grandeur it has long been denied.

“It’s still a movie,” said Esrailian. “It’s not a political statement. It’s just the truth.”

Bale, who plays an Associated Press correspondent in the film, was drawn to the altruistic nature of the project. “To my shame, I knew nothing about the Armenian genocide,” said Bale. “When I first read the script, it was an uncanny moment.”

He suspects many are like he was: only vaguely aware of the events, even though they were extensively covered by the press at the time. Hitler even cited the lack of remembrance of the Armenians as justification for the Holocaust. Still, the U.S. government in recent decades has declined to classify it genocide, despite the promises of some presidents, including Barack Obama , to do so. Turkey is a valuable NATO ally to the U.S. in, among other things, the fight against the Islamic State.

“I really only hope that the film can help and not actually exacerbate any problems,” said Bale. “But to me, it doesn’t take a genius to see that there’s an embarrassment to having to acknowledge the atrocities that occurred in the birthing of a nation. It happens to many nations.”

—

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

UCLA law school to receive $20 million for human rights institute to study the Armenian genocide and other atrocities

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The Promise

Eric Esrailian, lead producer of The Promise, and Co-Chief of the Division of Digestive Diseases at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA poses with Jennifer L. Mnookin, Dean of the UCLA School of Law. (Todd Cheney/ UCLA Law)

By Teresa Watanabe,

In a unique blend of Hollywood and human rights, the UCLA law school will receive $20 million in pledged proceeds from a new film on the Armenian genocide to expand its research and teaching of persecution, the university announced Monday.

The donation by a film company founded by the late Kerkor “Kirk” Kerkorian, an Armenian American philanthropist and businessman, will help establish the Promise Institute for Human Rights at UCLA School of Law.

The institute, which also will receive other donations and support from UCLA, will help the Westwood campus expand its research and advocacy on genocide awareness and prevention as well as the intersections between human rights and health, refugees, immigration and civil rights, said law school Dean Jennifer L. Mnookin.

She said the gift will help UCLA hire more faculty, sponsor guest speakers, host human rights symposia and support students through fellowships. UCLA law students and faculty currently work with human rights organizations in countries including Bangladesh, Honduras, India and South Africa, and with the United Nations and the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

“What we’d like to become is the West Coast powerhouse for the study and practice of human rights,” Mnookin said.

Eric Esrailian, a UCLA doctor and great-grandson of genocide survivors, helped Kerkorian launch the film company Survival Pictures in 2012, to expand awareness of human rights atrocities. Kerkorian, who owned the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio and is credited with helping develop Las Vegas with such hotels as the MGM Grand, donated more than $1 billion to charitable causes during his lifetime. He died in 2015 at age 98.

Survival Pictures’ debut production, “The Promise,” is set to open Friday as the first major film on the Armenian genocide. Historians estimate that 1.5 million Armenians and other ethnic and religious minorities perished at the hands of the Ottoman Turks beginning in 1915, although the Turkish government denies there was any official policy of ethnic cleansing.

The film is directed by Terry George — who directed and co-wrote “Hotel Rwanda” about genocide in that African nation — and stars Christian Bale, Charlotte Le Bon and Oscar Isaac. Co-producers are Esrailian, Phoenix Pictures chairman Mike Medavoy and veteran film producer William Horberg.

The company also has produced a documentary, “Intent to Destroy,” about the Armenian genocide that is set for release April 25 at the Tribeca Film Festival.

“As horrible as the Armenian genocide was, there are other ethnic and religious groups that have suffered persecution as well,” Esrailian said, adding that human rights crises exist right now in Syria, the Congo and South Sudan.

Both the feature film and the UCLA institute bear the word “promise” to reflect a commitment not to forget atrocities of the past and to fight against intolerance and persecution today, he said.

He said his team was inspired by the USC Shoah Foundation, which was launched by filmmaker Steven Spielberg to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and educate the public about it and has since expanded its work to other genocides. With genocide awareness and human rights work underway at the city’s two premier universities, Los Angeles is set to become a national hub of research and activism on the issue, Esrailian said.

The center is expected to open this fall.

Source: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ucla-armenian-human-rights-20170417-story.html

Armenians organized Genocide commemoration rally in Hague

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The launch of the commemorative events of the 102th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide was given at Het Plain square near the Dutch parliament in Hague. The commemorative observance is organized and coordinated by Armenian organizations of the Netherlands.

As the Facebook page “Diary of the Netherlands” reports, the rally will be attended and addressed by several Dutch lawmakers.

The source informs that the representatives of the organizers will enter the parliament and hand over a petition to the Dutch Parliament representatives.

 

France: PRESIDENTIAL 2017 Armenia News questionnaire: the replies of Mr François Fillon

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As we had agreed with the presidential candidates who agreed to reply to the questionnaires of News of Armenia Magazine (CF NAM 238), we republished their answers on armenews.com all week. They are listed in alphabetical order. Tuesday April 18th: Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, François Fillon. Wednesday, April 19: Benoît Hamon, Marine Le Pen. Thursday 20 April: Emmanuel Macron Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

News from Armenia Magazine: Since 2012, the genocide of Armenians is commemorated every April 24 by the Republic, with the participation of the President of the Republic and / or a minister. If you are elected, do you intend to continue this tradition? Can you promise that April 24 will be officially considered a national day of commemoration of the Armenian genocide and will be included as such in the Republican calendar?

François Fillon: Like my predecessors, if I am elected President of the Republic I will commemorate April 24th. It is important not to forget the thousands of victims. This genocide removed the Armenians from the eastern provinces of Asia Minor of the Ottoman Empire. 1.5 million people, or ¾ of the Armenian population were affected.

In France, eleven annual national days have been instituted by legislative or regulatory texts, for example, the commemoration of the victory of 8 May 1945, the commemoration of the Armistice of 11 November 1918 or the national day of homage to Harkis of 25 September and the death toll of the Algerian war and the fighting in Morocco and Tunisia on 5 December. The French of Armenian descent also insists on writing April 24 in our Republican calendar. It is legitimate.

What is your view of the Armenian community of France, constituted by the survivors of the genocide of 1915? In the face of the denial of the Turkish state, do you understand its fight for the international recognition of genocide and do you think it is fair for France to support it?

François Fillon: The French of Armenian origin and the Armenian community of France constitute an example of integration, of success, of patriotism. Everyone loves France but all also have a bit of their heart in Armenia. With the law of January 29, 2001, France publicly acknowledged the Armenian genocide of 1915. By recognizing the existence of the first genocide of the twentieth century, the French Republic symbolically gave the Armenian drama a place in the collective memory of mankind.

But the recognition of the genocide of 1915 could not be a completion, it was necessary to go further to avoid any competition of memories and any unequal treatment between the victims of the genocides recognized by French law and their descendants.

Why is the issue of the recognition of the 1915 genocide and denialism important?

François Fillon: The five hundred thousand Frenchmen of Armenian descent felt abandoned, left helpless by the Republic they had defended, sometimes at the cost of their blood. The descendants of Holocaust victims against Holocaust deniers were protected by law. The descendants of the survivors of the Armenian genocide had to face, alone and disarmed, an unprecedented phenomenon: the negationism of State. Turkey is very wrong not to look at its past. Every nation has its share of shadow and gains to recognize it.

The French Republic has a duty to protect all its citizens, including our citizens who have found asylum, homeland and freedom in France. It is up to the justice of the Republic to act to ensure respect for its citizens. An important legislative work had to be carried out in order to draw all the legal consequences of this recognition, that is to say, the penalization of denial.

Valerie Boyer has campaigned to penalize Holocaust denial in the name of human dignity and justice. I thank her for her commitment on this issue, not forgetting all the parliamentarians, associations and lawyers who have been mobilized for many years.

Today, repressing the denial of genocide is echoing a burning current, in the context of persecutions against the Christians of the East in Iraq and Syria in particular, described by Ban Ki-Moon as crimes against humanity.

I also visited Iraq, in 2009, 2014 and 2016, in particular in Erbil, and in June 2015, I wished to organize an evening of support for the Christians of the East at Cirque d’Hiver Which brought together more than 2,000 people.

Today, it emerges from the various testimonies that a hundred years later, History begins again. That is why it is normal that this fight against Holocaust denial has finally come to fruition thanks to the mobilization of deputies and senators.

Are you for Turkey’s accession to the European Union?

François Fillon: On this issue, I have always been consistent. I have never changed my opinion: Turkey’s accession to the European Union is neither possible nor desirable. I regret that France and Europe do not have the courage to say it sincerely to the Turkish authorities.

Do you think that France should continue to have a special relationship with Armenia?

François Fillon: Today our country has 500,000 French Armenians. The links between France and Armenia have always been strong. In 1909, the French navy helped the Armenians of Cilicia. Our ships were also there in 1915.This tragic story has created unfailing links.

France was the first to welcome surviving, driven, massacred Armenians. They were stateless, they became French. They also paid the price of blood by fighting alongside us during the two world wars.

Today, I also want to pay tribute to the educational cooperation between our two countries, which I have always been keen to preserve. Like the French university in Yerevan. It should also be noted that Armenia is an associate member of the International Organization of la Francophonie.

Let us also not forget our economic relations since France is the first European investor in Armenia.

These relationships are strong and continue to grow. The Franco-Armenian friendship has long and beautiful days before it …

Are you in favor of the recognition by France of the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh?

François Fillon: In April 2016, for six days, the Southern Caucasus had once again flamed.

Confirmed by international indifference, Azerbaijan had tried to retake by force Nagorno-Karabakh. This murderous offensive ended with a precarious ceasefire.

Today our French citizens of Armenian origin are worried and I am also worried because the Nagorno-Karabakh region is a powder magazine. Let us not forget that the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh is due to Stalin, who arbitrarily detached him from Armenia to Azerbaijan in 1921. Now there is no choice but to find a Peaceful and lasting solution through the United Nations.

Would you be for the creation in Paris of an Armenian center of civilization and memory and would you be ready to help in its realization?

François Fillon: We need a place of sharing and meditation. But beyond the existence of an Armenian center of civilization and memory, I wonder about the future of the Armenian Museum of France (MAF) at the Musée Guimet.

Indeed, in recent years, the Musée Guimet, on which the Hôtel d’Ennery depends, has begun renovation work. The Armenian Museum was then asked to move some of its collections, with the assurance given by the Minister of Culture to be able to return to the site at the end of the site. It must be noted that this undertaking was not kept.

While the MAF funds represent the largest Armenian art collection in Europe: nearly 1,200 works recounting 3,000 years of history, the Government remains vague. Why not save the MAF? I attach great importance to the preservation of our national heritage, of which the collection of the MAF is now a part.

What message would you like to address to the 500,000 French of Armenian origin?

François Fillon: I want to salute the memory and the courage of the Armenians who became French, known or anonymous. They fought for truth, dignity, social success. They are the example of a successful assimilation. They participated in the construction of our national narrative. As Charles Aznavour says so well, they knew how to remain “100% French and 100% Armenian”. I want to pay tribute to them.

Tuesday, April 18, 2017,
Claire © armenews.com