Recently, I had the opportunity to watch a documentary feature film with feature episodes called “Map of Salvation” by “Man Pictures” studio at the “Moscow” cinema house. The author and the producer of the idea is Manvel Saribekyan, the film director – Aram Shahbazyan, screenwriter – Anna Sargsyan, operators – Arthur Gharayan, Vahe Hakobyan and Rodin Alloush (Syria), and the music by Vig Zartman (Austria). In April, the film was screened several times under the events of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. The “Map of Salvation” tells about five, European, humanist women, who have witnessed the massacres of the Armenians and are the founders of the shelters for the Armenian children and women: Maria Jakobsen (Denmark) and missionaries Karen Eppe (Denmark), Bodil Bjorn (Norway), Alma Johansson (Sweden), Anna Hedwig Bul (Estonia).
These young women, leaving their cozy and soft life in good-looking European cities behind and forgetting about personal happiness, become mothers of the Armenian orphans and drew the map of salvation for the people of Armenia. The film-narrator is Finnish historian and genocide expert, Svante Lundgren. He passes along the map of salvation for 90 minutes restoring the women’s memories and emotions. Unlike other genocide films, in the “Map of Salvation”, the eyewitness foreigners who have passed thru this hell are talking about this carnage perpetrated by the Turks. For them, the homeland of Armenians later became their homeland. And even if there were no documentary about the Armenian Genocide preserved, only the diaries of these women were enough to testify that this tragedy has happened.
The film shootings took place in 29 cities of 9 countries: in royal libraries, government organizations and other organizations’ archives, museums, personal archives and other topic-related places. The “Map of Salvation” is an honest film, because such are all its heroes, as well as the long and the short of it. The film is also impressive but not with poor weeping. The “Map of Salvation” is topical, everyone must see it as even in this progressive 21st century, the genocides are still on, the “children of death” are drawing death maps in the Middle East. In the “Map of Salvation”, the theme of Genocide is not talked in an emphasized way but the message is clear as long as the souls of the martyrs of the Armenian Genocide are not rested and the world has not condemned the perpetrators of the massacre, new genocides will be continued, the man will still kill the man of his kind. Manvel Saribekyan, the film producer, hopes to shoot the 5-part TV version of the film if appropriate financial resources are found, and to present 15 more eyewitnesses of the Armenian Genocide.
Gohar HAKOBYAN,
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