USC Shoah Institute Begins Armenian Genocide Testimony Clip Series

LOS ANGELES — To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and the first integration of Armenian Genocide testimonies into the Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation will release one clip from the Armenian Genocide collection on the Institute’s website each day for the next 30 days.

The clips will showcase some of the more than 400 testimonies from the Armenian Genocide that will be integrated into the Institute’s Visual History Archive, which contains 53,000 testimonies from survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides. The Armenian testimonies were first delivered to the Institute in April 2014 to begin the integration and indexing process.

To help put the clips into perspective, each one will be introduced by experts steeped in knowledge about the Armenian Genocide. The presenters will also recommend additional resources for those who would like to learn more.

The first five clips will be introduced by Professor Richard Hovannisian, one of the world’s leading scholars on the Armenian Genocide. Hovannisian is professor emeritus of History at UCLA and an adjunct professor at USC.

The Armenian testimonies were filmed by J. Michael Hagopian and the Armenian Film Foundation between 1972 and 2004 when most of the survivors were in their 70s and 80s. Testimonies in the collection, the largest archive on film of Armenian Genocide interviews in the world, were recorded in 10 countries and 10 languages, including English, Armenian, Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish.

Hagopian was an Emmy-nominated filmmaker who made 70 educational documentaries – including 17 on Armenian culture and history, including an epic trilogy on the Armenian Genocide comprised ofVoices from the Lake, Germany and the Secret Genocide, and The River Ran Red. He was a survivor of the genocide that killed an estimated 1.5 million people in Turkey from 1915–23. In 1979, he founded the Armenian Film Foundation, a Thousand Oaks, California-based nonprofit dedicated to documenting Armenian heritage. Hagopian died in December 2010 at age 97.