Armenisches Leben in der Türkei

Chienne d’histoire (Barking Island)
Serge Avédikian, France 2010, 15 min. no dialogue, digital

Retourner à Sölöz (Back to Sölöz)
Serge Avédikian, France 2020, 65 min. French and Turkish original version with English subtitles, DCP

French-Armenian actor and filmmaker Serge Avédikian is one of the most prominent members of the Armenian French diaspora. His animation Chienne d’histoire won a Golden Palm for Best Short Film in Cannes in 2010. The film recalls the eviction of several thousands of dogs from Istanbul in 1910 - a meticulously executed campaign which appears to be a blueprint for the Armenian Genocide five years later. Between 1987 and 2019, Avédikian traveled four times to the Turkish village of Sölöz, his grandparents’ hometown close to Bursa. Here he interviewed the inhabitants about life as Turkish Armenians. Retourner à Sölöz is thus a personal and multi-layered tribute to the rich history of Armenian life in the Ottoman Empire.

Elke Shoghig Hartmann is professor of Ottoman studies and Turcology at Free University Berlin. In 2010, she co-founded the project "www.houshamadyan.org" on everyday life and culture of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, and in 2016, the Chair of Armenian Studies at the Péter Pázmány Catholic University of Budapest.

Lusin Reinsch studied business administration in Berlin and Buenos Aires, Argentina, and cultural management in Saarbrücken. From September 2020 to August 2023, she was a curatorial assistant and program coordinator at Galerie Nord | Tiergarten Art Association and part of the artistic management team at the Bärenzwinger. She is currently working as a freelance curator and gallery assistant at the Zilberman Gallery Berlin.