Armenographie by Anna Barseghyan and Stefan Kristensen

RepatArmenia Foundation is organizing a film screening and discussion series called the Transnation, starting with the documentary Armenographie by Anna Barseghyan and Stefan Kristensen.
According to Khachig Tölölyan, Armenians around the world constitute a worldwide “transnation” where each part has its institutions and its role, as part of a global Armenian identity. Kessab, Aleppo, Anjar, Beirut, Istanbul, Paris, and Montreal; all these cities have one thing in common: in all these cities Armenians.
Do these communities face the same challenges after a century or more of existence? Does the Istanbul Armenian community consider itself as a diaspora? What is a diaspora’s final purpose – survival of an identity or repatriation to the country of origin? What is ‘Armenianness’ nowadays?
Anna Barseghyan and Stefan Kristensen, two philosophers from Switzerland are questioning the dispersion experience and survival in the diaspora. Between 2005 and 2006, they have interviewed representatives of the Armenian diaspora from the Middle East to the West. In the documentary we can see such personalities as Agos’ Editor-in-chief Hrant Dink, film director Atom Egoyan and his wife Arsinée Khandjian, prominent historian and intellectual at Columbian University, Marc Nichanian, among others.
The first screening dedicated to Syria will take place at Mirzoyan Library, on February 19th at 7 P.M. followed by a discussion with Hagop Tcholakian, a well-known philologist, historian, and ethnographer who specialized in the history of Armenians of Kessab and the Antioch region, currently living in Yerevan.
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Hagop Tcholakian (Oct. 16, 1947, Kessab, Syria) is a well-known philologist, historian, and ethnographer. He graduated from the Philology Faculty of the Yerevan State University (1973). Candidate of Historical Sciences (2002), he taught in Ainjar and Beirut schools, in the Karen Jeppe National Academy in Aleppo, in the local Mkhitarian Armenological College, in the Hamazkayin Armenological Institute. In 2014, after the deportation of Kessab Armenians, he settled in Yerevan.
Tcholakian has published the historical-philological and ethnographic works (Kessab Folk Music, Kessab Dialect, Armenians of Ruj Valley Near Antioch and The Artsakh Consciousness Poetry). He is also the author of books devoted to the history of Armenian Diaspora schools, as well as the author of the 6 volume textbooks for Armenian Diaspora primary, middle and secondary schools.
Tcholakian’s last book is The Three Days of Kessab: 21-23 March, 2014 (2014, Yerevan), which is eye-witness testimony to the total depopulation of Armenians that took place in the Kessab region in those days.