When Armenian filmmaker Inna Sahakyan discovered the story of the extraordinary Aurora Mardiganian, a star of Hollywood’s silent era, when going through the Zoryan Institute archives, she finally found a way to tell her story of the Armenian genocide.
‘The Armenian genocide is the enduring pain of my nation,” says filmmaker Inna Sahakyan in the notes for her documentary Aurora’s Sunrise. “It is my family’s pain, and it is my own pain. Though I always wanted to, I was wary of making a film about it. I was afraid to be overly sentimental, overly emotional. I was afraid of telling stories that only confirmed Armenians as a nation of victims with no historical agency and nothing but tragedy running through our veins.”
But when she discovered an interview with silent Hollywood star Aurora Mardiganian while going through the Zoryan Institute archives, any fears or doubts or fears about telling the story were dispelled. “This genocide survivor was once a major celebrity? How come I have never heard of her? How can it be that nobody has heard of her? As I kept watching her interview other emotions started to overcome me,” says Sahakyan.
“As she spoke it seemed to me as if she grew younger and younger. Even though her story was painful to hear, an incredible but also ordinary heroism shone through. This woman refused to be reduced to a victim. She refused to be reduced to an object of history. I knew then that I would make my film about the genocide.”
But Aurora’s tale wasn’t destined to be a happy one. As an ingenue in Hollywood, she became, perhaps unsurprisingly, a victim of greed, corruption and exploitation, while all the time dealing with her own trauma and sense of survivor’s guilt.
“Basically I see, unfortunately, how the history is repeating itself, not only with the recent war [in Armenia], but also with female rights and similar teenage stories, how they were used in this period,” Sahakyan tells Business Doc Europe. “It’s still a kind of continuation of the same history of Armenia. For me, that’s also one of the reasons that this documentary needs to be made.”
The animated documentary, which is made possible by the academic contribution of the Zoryan Institute and based on its Oral History Archive, will be told very much from Aurora’s perspective, after Sahakyan secured the rights to three archive interviews. The 1919 silent film Auction of Souls, which starred Aurora, is now in public domain and can therefore be accessed for materials. The director/producer has also secured the co-operation of the Armenian Genocide Memorial, with full access to its collection.
Produced by Bars Media (Armenia), gebrueder beetz filmproduktion (Germany) and ARTBOX laisvalaikio klubas (Lithuania), Sahakyan is confident she will complete the film by the end of the 2021.
The director further underlines a very personal, familial sense of imperative in realising this film. “I have a daughter that is the same age as Aurora was when the genocide began, and I want that she and her friends could see a role-model in Aurora. We Armenians have long seen ourselves only as victims,” she says.
“The genocide, which has so far not [been] recognized by Turkey, the United States, or many countries of world, has remained an open wound for our people. With this film I want to do my part to change that. I want my daughter and other Armenian girls to see Aurora in a similar light to a figure like Malala Yousafzai: a young woman who rose above her trauma and became a fighter for justice and universal human values.”
