The Armenian movement to show the world its unity has been in effect for a long time, however, not many films or filmmakers have used the motion picture medium to communicate to the world. Finally, there is a group of young artists, calling themselves Armenian Filmmaker, headed by founder filmmaker Shervin Youssefian (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1352346/ who are working day and night to bring the Armenian identity to the front page by of world news.
The Armenian community has for a long time rallied for the world to recognize the Armenian genocide that carried out by the Ottoman Empire in 1914. Every year on the 24th of April, Armenians young and old come together with great big Armenian flags to demonstrate against the Turkish government in hopes that it will finally admit to the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians at the beginning of the 20th Century.
Hollywood has focused mostly on the genocide of the Jewish population and it seems not at all on the Armenian genocide until just recently when Atom Egoyan made a film entitled Ararat. Along with Ruben Mamoulyan and Kirk Krikorian, Egoyan was just of a handful of Armenian artists involved in the motion picture industry.
While the Armenian community gave some good reviews of Ararat, many felt that it was not as strong a homage to the Armenian culture and people because of its strong thematic subject matter involving incest and drug abuse. Critics felt that it was too much of an art house film with less appeal to the mass audiences. The Egoyan was also criticized for having chose a more Quentin Tarantino/Pulp Fiction approach to tell a story about human relationships and tragedies whereas he would have been better off if he chose a more conventional narrative.
Armenian Filmmaker is a Los Angeles production group that includes bright Armenian filmmakers who have come up with an ingenious solution to break down the Hollywood barriers and establish themselves as a force to be reckoned with. They are rallying to the Armenian community in Los Angeles to come together and fund Machiavelli Hangman (http://www.hangmanmovie.com a 200,000 dollar budget motion picture one dollar at a time. “If this works the way I think it”s going to work, it”s going to revolutionize Hollywood. If the 200,000 Armenians come in and give one dollar, this would be enough for us to complete the film.” Many genocide activists think although the community has received some criticism about its lack of support for its own people, this movement would finally put an end to any questions about the unity of the Armenian community.
While there are also many skeptics of this movement, since its launch date of April 2005, the website has received thousands of hits and up to 60,000 dollars in contributions!
