Monday, May 23, a special effervescence moderated the County Council to honor Shows Bouches-du-Rhône Marseilles. We had to award the Charles Price Aznavour 2016, as part of the Book Festival Franco-Armenian literary prize awarded to a book on Armenian themes, an initiative of Richard Findykian, Deputy Mayor of the 9th and 10th arrondissements Marseille and Aix Marseille Provence metropolitan Advisor.
They were 5 to apply for this award:
Hélène Kosseian for “Armenia in the heart of Memory” (Editions du Rocher)
Valerie Toranian for the “Alien” (Flammarion)
Michel Marian to “The Armenian Genocide” (Albin Michel)
Vincent Duclert for “France against the Armenian Genocide” (Fayard)
and Gaya Guerian for “The Armenian” (XO Editions)
And so it is Valérie Toranian (1), accompanied by Franz-Olivier Giesbert, happy, excited and “overwhelmed by this city of Marseille that greeted his grandmother there almost a hundred years,” which won the majority of votes for publishing 2016 Price Charles Aznavour handed over by the President of the departmental Council of the Bouches-du-Rhône, Martine Vassal, with congratulations from Charles Aznavour who was celebrating his 92th birthday the day before.
Ceremony
Highly anticipated by the 500 people present, Charles Aznavour appeared at 11h 15, hand cane sugar under thunderous applause, before receiving the hands of the president of the County Council, Martine Vassal, the Honorary Medal department, attended by many elected Consul of Armenia in Marseille, Samuel Lalayan, and Guy Teissier MP.
Martine Vassal has paid tribute to the global purveyor of French chanson, while welcoming the Armenian community for its dynamism and condemning, without ambiguity, the Azerbaijani aggression against Nagorno Karabakh in the night of 1 April. So she called France to “ask the independence of Nagorno Karabakh, Armenian and Christian land.”
Charles Aznavour has meanwhile said his “tenderness and nostalgia to this corner of France (Marseille).
Before being awarded the Prix Charles Aznavour, the children of the college hamazkayin interpreted with two French-Armenian singers, Marianne and Frank Neri Ohanessian “They fell” and “For you Armenia”.
n a particularly laudatory speech, not absent from humor, to address the inevitable world-renowned artist, Richard Findykian hailed the exceptional career of the man who is the pride of millions of diaspora Armenians, while touting the taste of Olive oil produced by the artist in his property in Mouriès, near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, titling it “the Merchant fruit and vegetable Mouriès” A visibly delighted that aside Charles.
In turn, Guy Teissier, unwavering support of the Armenian cause, denounced the Azeri aggression and said it would shortly submit to the National Assembly a motion for the recognition of independence of Nagorno Karabakh. He has also spoken to the recognition by Turkey of the Armenian genocide, not to honor the Turkish intellectuals in their fight alongside the Armenians.
On behalf of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Armenian-French Marseille, Richard Findykian delivers the honorary diplomas to Martine Vassal and Guy Teissier
Jean Eckian + Photos & Son
In this narrative that runs through the century, Valerie Toranian wrote the novel of life, or rather lives of Aravni: the young girl fleeing the Armenian genocide in 1915 until the grandmother also loving qu’intransigeante that she became, she gives her existence impacted by history a universal dimension and honors this grandmother “foreign” to the most beautiful way possible.