Armentsi: The Armenians of Bulgaria [Video Documentary]
20-year-old Anahid Yahjian of Los Angeles recently produced Armentsi, a 10-minute documentary exploring the assimilation of the Armenian community in Bulgaria.
A member of the Armenian Youth Federation’s Western Region, Yahjian was born in Sofia, Bulgaria and was raised in Los Angeles. She traveled to Bulgaria in winter 2008, where she filmed 11 interviews with various members of the Armenian communities of Sofia and Plovdiv.
The project was funded by a Richter-ASP research grant from Occidental College, where Yahjian is a senior English and Comparative Literary Studies major. The film is a product of Yahjian’s academic interest in both Armenian and non-Armenian conceptions of diaspora, nationalism, cultural memory and identity.
Armentsi contains a small portion of the interviews Yahjian conducted and focuses on the Armenians in Sofia. She is currently editing and compiling the remaining footage into mini-videos that she will then post to YouTube. Armentsi won second place at the 2010 Occidental College Student Film Festival, held on the Occidental campus in February.
Yahjian is currently in Kigali, Rwanda, volunteering as a photography instructor.
See Armentsi here: http://youtube.com/anahidyahjian
Yahjian’s Rwanda blog: http://recollectingrwanda.tumblr.com
My parents immigrated from Syria, I was only 5. I grew up in L.A. It is the morals and your upbringing your PARENTS raise you with! The pride of knowing your histoy, culture, religon! My parents always reminded me that I am Armenian! Marring odar was not an opption! I mean I could have but, with each odar marriage you lessen our struggle of existance! It is the duty of EVERY Armenian parent to remind their children the imorptance of preserving your race! It would be a spit in the face of our Great grandparents to turn our back on that! As a mother of 3 kids, I have and will continue to do all in my power to make sure my kids know who they are and where they came from! Etnicity is imortant! I’m not racist, I’m just proud of my race! It is far easier to do nothing! I have decided to keep the purity of my race! I feel pride in saying I am 100% ARMENIAN!!! Sending my kids to Armenian schools. Making sure they are involved in Armenian Orginizations like Homenetmen, AYF, ARF. Giving back to thier Armenian community. Having them visit an talk to older Armenians in Old age homes. And finally visiting Armenia! If each generation feels as i do we will not lose this War!
Dear Verkine, < > and < > do NOT match to each ather, but who am I to judje you? I understand that this ideologycal theory, born in arabian countries is useful for some armenian girls or boys in USA – may be ugly on face? – but let me ask you: do you mean that armenians are some kind different race than bulgarians or other europeans (exept hungarians!)? Where you studied or discovered this fabulous “theory”? I know the man who made “araratizm” and 10-15 years I study “ceghagronizm”, therefor I must to tell you that ksenofobia is the last disaster you ill of!!! My language is not very good for explane what I need to tell you, but you killing me with this “marring odar”, ha-ha-ha!!! May be you can NOT understand, but in “odar” counties we, armenians are more “odar”, neder the local peoples!!! You can keep feel proud to say that you are 100 % armenian, but just let the rest armenians (like me) to feel proud to tell the people like you that we are proud to be 25 % or 0,001 % armenians!!! This dosn’t means that we are less armenians and you are more!!! Finaly you told me more than you want to do with this crazy tooking about some Great “War’, that “we will not lose”! Please do me a favour and tell me more about this one, but remmember something important – I know more about Karabah, than everyone like you and this was local war, not Great!!!
iliyasim@yahoo.com