Film Screening of AGHET - Ein Völkermord – Genocide at the Central Library
Artists For Peace invites you Glendale, CA – Glendale Public Library to screen the documentary film Aghet - Ein Völkermord on Sunday, March 27, 2011, at 4 p.m., in the Glendale Central Library Auditorium, 222 East Harvard Street, Glendale. Admission is free and the seating is limited. Library visitors receive 3 hours FREE parking across the street at The Market Place parking structure with validation at the loan desk.
Aghet is a powerful documentary, depicting the annihilation of 1.5 million Armenians from 1915-1923 and the effects of the Turkish government's international campaign of genocide denial. The film highlights the Turkish authorities’ current policy of those crimes.
Award-winning director Eric Friedler assembles an impeccable cast, who bring to life the original text of German and U.S. diplomatic dispatches and eyewitness accounts, interspersed with never-before-seen footage of the Genocide and its political aftermath. The 2010 film, applauded by Nobel Prize laureate Gunter Grass, has sparked debate throughout Europe. The 90-minute is now being showcased around the world on television, and in major film festivals.
More information about the movie:
Aghet – Ein Völkermord (English: Aghet – A Genocide; Aghet being Armenian for "catastrophe") is a German 2010 documentary film on the Armenian Genocide by the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. It is based on eyewitness reports by European and American personnel stationed in the Near East at the time, Armenian survivors and other contemporary witnesses which are recited by modern German actors. The visual material partly consists of secretly shot photographs of the death marches, Turkish atrocities and suffering of the Armenian deportees.
Aghet – Ein Völkermord was awarded the 2010 Deutscher Fernsehpreis and the 2011 Grimme Award, two of the most prestigious awards of German television. According to its director, German journalist Eric Friedler, the documentary was presented to many members of the US Congress and US Senate who have expressed astonishment on how well documented the genocide actually is. An official presentation at Capitol Hill took place in July 2010.
Aghet also won the 2010 Armin T. Wegner Humanitarian Award in Los Angeles and received international recognition on the Montreal World Film Festival the same year. It was set to be shown before large audiences in the universities of Harvard and Columbia. The documentary has been praised for introducing "Aghet", the Armenian term for the Turkish massacres, to an international audience.
The advocacy group of the Turkish community in Germany has protested against the film.