• Ben Shirinian’s feature directorial debut, The Housewife, has had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival

  Ben Shirinian’s feature directorial debut, The Housewife, has had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Armenian Film Society writes…

By Shushan Shatikyan YEREVAN. – Armenia and the rest of the world are holding a variety of events ahead of the Armenian Genocide Centennial.

In this connection, NEWS.am STYLE spoke with director Amatuni Virabyan of the National Archives of Armenia (NAA).Virabyan noted that this year the NAA will conduct its main activities in two directions: publicizing and exhibiting the existing documents pertaining to the genocide.  “We have done a lot of work in recent years in making the documents public,” the NAA director noted.  He added that the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, in capital city Yerevan, is preparing for a major exhibition this year, and the national archive has provided numerous documents for this event. The museum-institute has also decided to hold exhibitions devoted to the genocide of other nations in the Ottoman Empire.  

 Also in the lead-up to the centenary of the Armenian Genocide, the NAA is preparing a databank comprising the names of the genocide victims. And reflecting in the recent Daily Mail information with respect to the forebears of famous American Armenian television personality Kim Kardashian, Amatuni Virabyan noted that the Kardashian family had two branches.    

“One part lived in the Kars Province [in modern-day Turkey]; they were Protestants. People used to call them Molokan; Armenian Molokans. And the other part, [lived] in [the] Erzurum [Province in modern-day Turkey]. “We found the Kardashians’ traces in Karakale village of the Kars Province. Their family moved to America before the Genocide, but the others, who stayed and survived the slaughter, found shelter in [Armenia’s] Gyumri [city], which at the time was called Alexandropol.  

“There are Kardashians in Gyumri, who are the distant relatives of the famous Kardashians. Their representatives were here [, in Armenia]. They are shooting a film now; they need to come here again, and I will read, show them those Karakale documents,” Virabyan noted.

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