Animated Memory

Armat
Élodie Dermange, Switzerland 2022, 11 min., French original version with English subtitles, DCP

Aurora’s Sunrise
Inna Sahakyan, Armenia, Germany, Lithuania 2022, 93 min., Armenian, Turkish, Kurdish and English original version with English subtitles, DCP

Armat tells the story of a young Swiss woman as she searches for her Armenian origins. This animation, poetic and haunting, deals with silence as a crucial effect of trauma. In 1919, a spectacular film was made in Hollywood about the Armenian genocide, of which only fragments have survived. In playing the lead role, the young Arshaluys Mardigian, herself a survivor of the genocide, relived her traumatic experiences. Aurora's Sunrise combines animation with original archival footage in a masterful reconstruction of Mardigian's harrowing story.

Ani Menua is a freelance author, researcher and podcaster. In her interdisciplinary and interlingual work, she pursues the approach of conceptual writing, which emerged from her artistic research project “Performative Poetics”. She is currently working on an audio feature on the topic of violence and the Armenian genocide.