Screening of “Finding Zabel Yesayan” on March 30 at NAASR

BELMONT, MA — The Armenian International Women’s Association (AIWA) and the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) will present the documentary Finding Zabel Yesayan on Wednesday, March 30, 2011, at 8:00 p.m., at the NAASR Center, 395 Concord Ave., Belmont, MA. The documentary is the work of Lara Aharonian and Talin Suciyan, and the latter will be present to offer remarks on the film.
An Armenian writer, activist, and feminist, Zabel Yesayan was one of the most prominent Armenian intellectuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As a member of an Armenian fact-finding delegation, she witnessed the aftermath of the bloody massacres of Adana in 1909 and gave a stark account in Averagneru Mech (Among the Ruins). The only woman on the “black list” of the Armenian intellectuals arrested on the night of April 24, 1915, she was able to escape to Bulgaria. After the war, she immigrated to Soviet Armenia and in the 1940s died under mysterious circumstances, a victim of Stalin’s Great Purge.
Finding Zabel Yesayan, a 40-minute documentary, traces the writer’s turbulent life and is based on family archives, novels, documents, photographs, and reflections on her life and work by descendants, acquaintances, and scholars.
Talin Suciyan is an Istanbul Armenian journalist who lived in Armenia from 2007-08. She is currently based in Munich, where she is pursuing her graduate studies and serves as a teaching fellow at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität. She has contributed regularly to Agos (from 2007-2010) and other Turkish newspapers.
Admission to the event is free (donations appreciated). The NAASR Center is located opposite the First Armenian Church and next to the U.S. Post Office. Ample parking is available around the building and in adjacent areas. The lecture will begin promptly at 8:00 p.m.
More information about the lecture is available by contacting NAASR at 617-489-1610 or hq@naasr.org, or AIWA at 617-926-0171 or aiwainc@aol.com.