1915 | |
---|---|
![]() Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by |
|
Written by |
|
Produced by |
|
Starring | |
Cinematography | Leigh Lisbão Underwood |
Edited by |
|
Music by | Serj Tankian |
Production companies |
|
Distributed by | Bloodvine Media |
Release date |
|
Running time | 82 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Box office | $111,682 [1] |
1915 is a 2015 American psychological thriller film written and directed by Garin Hovannisian and Alec Mouhibian. The film stars Simon Abkarian, Angela Sarafyan, Nikolai Kinski, Debra Christofferson, Jim Piddock, and Samuel Page. It follows a mysterious director staging a play to bring the ghosts of a forgotten tragedy back to life on the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. [2] [3]
The film was released in theaters on April 17, 2015, and through video on demand on April 22, 2015. [4] [5]
Exactly 100 years after the Armenian genocide committed within the Ottoman Empire, a director (Simon Abkarian) is staging a play at the historic Los Angeles Theatre to honor the victims of the massacre. The play stars his enigmatic wife (Angela Sarafyan) as an Armenian woman in 1915 who must make a tragic and controversial decision that will change the course of history. This will not be an ordinary performance. As protesters surround the theater before showtime, and a series of strange accidents spread panic among its actors (Sam Page, Nikolai Kinski) and producer (Jim Piddock), it appears that Simon's mission is far more dangerous than we think—and the ghosts of the past are everywhere. [6]
The film explores many themes, especially that of denial—referring not only to the 100-year denial [7] of the Armenian Genocide by the Republic of Turkey, but also the many forms of individual denial among the characters in the story.
Critic Martin Tsai, in his Los Angeles Times review, identified 1915 as contemplating "personal tragedy versus collective grief, artistic license versus historical responsibility, revisionist history versus corrective narrative, forgetting versus moving on," and praised the film as "one creative way to do justice to such a monumental topic." [8]
In an interview, co-writer/director Alec Mouhibian said, "How can the past have such power over us in the present, and what are the secret ways in which we deal with it? The target of 1915 is you, the viewer, whoever you are, whatever your background. Everyone who steps into the mystery will experience it in one's own way. We hope you come out of it with a richer connection to your past -- a new way of feeling history." [9]
1915 is the first feature film by Garin Hovannisian and Alec Mouhibian. Hovannisian is the author of Family of Shadows [10] and has written for the Los Angeles Times , The New York Times , and other publications. Mouhibian is a writer and comedian whose work has appeared in Slate , The Weekly Standard , and a variety of other publications. He has also been a Media Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.[ citation needed ]
Hovannisian and Mouhibian have been collaborating on film and literary projects for more than ten years. [11]
The film was produced by Bloodvine Media, in conjunction with Strongman and mTuckman Media. [12]
Filming took place almost entirely on location at the historic Los Angeles Theatre, in downtown LA. Long believed to be haunted, the theater is its own character in the story, and the deleted scenes include references to one of its founders, Charlie Chaplin.
The original score of the film was composed by System of a Down's lead singer, Serj Tankian. It is his first film score. [13]
The theatrical release of 1915 in the United States took place on April 17, 2015, with the film's premiere taking place on April 13 at the Egyptian Theatre in conjunction with the American Cinematheque. It released widely in Russia on April 23, 2015, and in Armenia on April 25, 2015. Its first international preview was at the Maxim Gorky Theatre in Berlin, Germany on April 5, 2015. It released in Australia in June, 2015.
On May 26, 2016, the film was released in the UK. [14] On June 4 it was released in France.
In 2015 it was featured selection in the Golden Apricot International Film Festival, Romanian International Film Festival, and Lake Van International Film Festival in Turkey, where it won the Special Jury Prize. It was also awarded "Best Film" by the World Entertainment Armenian Awards.
Van is a city in eastern Turkey's Van Province, on the eastern shore of Lake Van. It is the capital and largest city of Van Province.
Ararat is a 2002 historical-drama film written and directed by Atom Egoyan and starring Charles Aznavour, Christopher Plummer, David Alpay, Arsinée Khanjian, Eric Bogosian, Bruce Greenwood and Elias Koteas. It is about a family and film crew in Toronto working on a film based loosely on the 1915 defense of Van during the Armenian genocide. In addition to exploring the human impact of that specific historical event, Ararat examines the nature of truth and its representation through art. The genocide is disputed by the Government of Turkey, an issue that partially inspired and is explored in the film.
Musa Dagh is a mountain in the Hatay Province of Turkey. In 1915, it was the location of a successful Armenian resistance to the Armenian genocide, an event that inspired Franz Werfel to write the novel The Forty Days of Musa Dagh.
Justin A. McCarthy is an American demographer, former professor of history at the University of Louisville, in Louisville, Kentucky. He holds an honorary doctorate from Boğaziçi University (Turkey), was awarded the Order of Merit of Turkey, and is a board member of the Institute of Turkish Studies and the Center for Eurasian Studies (AVIM). His area of expertise is the history of the late Ottoman Empire.
Armenian genocide denial is the claim that the Ottoman Empire and its ruling party, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), did not commit genocide against its Armenian citizens during World War I—a crime documented in a large body of evidence and affirmed by the vast majority of scholars. The perpetrators denied the genocide as they carried it out, claiming that Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were resettled for military reasons, not exterminated. In the genocide's aftermath, incriminating documents were systematically destroyed, and denial has been the policy of every government of the Republic of Turkey, as of 2023, and later adopted by the Republic of Azerbaijan, as of 1991.
The Shabin-Karahisar uprising was a resistance effort by the Armenian militia of the Hunchaks of the Giresun Province against Ottoman troops during the Armenian genocide. They had resisted the Ottoman onslaught for the duration of a month. The Armenians had positioned themselves in a fort right outside the town where about 250 men fought off Turkish soldiers.
The Armenian Genocide Martyrs Monument, better known as Montebello Genocide Memorial, is a monument in Montebello, California in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, dedicated to the victims of the Armenian genocide of 1915. The monument, opened in April 1968, is a tower of eight arches supported on 75-foot-tall (23 m) white concrete columns. The memorial was designed by Hrant Agbabian. It is the oldest and largest memorial in the United States dedicated to the Armenian Genocide victims. The inscription on the memorial plaque reads:
Armenian Martyrs Memorial Monument: This Monument erected by Americans of Armenian descent, is dedicated to the 1,500,000 Armenian victims of the Genocide perpetrated by the Turkish Government, 1915–1921, and to men of all nations who have fallen victim to crimes against humanity.
Richard Hovannisian was an American historian and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is known mainly for his four-volume history of the First Republic of Armenia.
Armenian genocide recognition is the formal acceptance that the systematic massacres and forced deportation of Armenians committed by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, during and after the First World War, constituted genocide.
Stanford Jay Shaw was an American historian, best known for his works on the late Ottoman Empire, Turkish Jews, and the early Turkish Republic. Shaw's works have been criticized for their lack of factual accuracy as well as denial of the Armenian genocide, and other pro-Turkish bias.
Heath Ward Lowry is the Atatürk Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies emeritus at Princeton University and Bahçeşehir University. He is an author of books about the history of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey.
Edward J. Erickson is a retired regular U.S. Army officer at the Marine Corps University who has written widely on the Ottoman Army during World War I. He is an associate of International Research Associates, Seattle, Washington and as of July 2016 was also listed as an advisory board member of the Ankara-based, Turkish government aligned think-tank, Avrasya Incelemeleri Merkezi (AVIM), which goes by the English name Center for Eurasian Studies.
The Turkish Coalition of America (TCA) is the main Turkish lobby organization in the United States. Its stated purpose includes education and congressional advocacy. It is based in Washington, D.C., with an office in Boston, Massachusetts. A 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, it engages in educational, cultural, social and political activities and it's closely aligned to the Congressional Caucus on Turkey and Turkish Americans.
Garin K. Hovannisian is an Armenian American writer, filmmaker, and producer. He is the director of the award-winning films 1915 (2015), I Am Not Alone (2019), and Truth to Power (2020), and the author of the book Family of Shadows: A century of murder, memory, and the Armenian American dream. He is also the founder of the arts foundation Creative Armenia.
Witnesses and testimony provide an important and valuable insight into the events which occurred both during and after the Armenian genocide. The Armenian genocide was prepared and carried out by the Ottoman government in 1915 as well as in the following years. As a result of the genocide, as many as 1.5 million Armenians who were living in their ancestral homeland were deported and murdered.
Mehmet Celal Bey was an Ottoman-born Turkish statesman and a key witness to the Armenian genocide. During his career as a politician, Celal Bey served as governor of the Ottoman provinces associated with the cities Erzurum, Aleppo, Aydın, Edirne, Konya, and Adana. He also served as minister of the interior and minister of agriculture as well as mayor of Istanbul. Celal Bey is known for having saved many lives during the Armenian genocide by defying deportation orders, which were preludes to starvation and massacres. As a result, he was removed from his post as governor in Aleppo and transferred to Konya, where he was again dismissed upon continuing to obstruct deportations. Today, he is often called the Turkish Oskar Schindler.
The Ottoman Lieutenant is a Turkish-American romantic war drama film directed by Joseph Ruben and written by Jeff Stockwell. The film stars Michiel Huisman, Hera Hilmar, Josh Hartnett and Ben Kingsley. The film was released widely on March 10, 2017.
The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide is a 2006 book by Guenter Lewy about the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. In the book, Lewy argues that the high death toll among Ottoman Armenians was a byproduct of the conditions of the marches and on sporadic attacks rather than a planned attempt to exterminate them.
Bibliography of the Armenian genocide is a list of books about the Armenian genocide:
The relationship between the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust has been discussed by scholars. The majority of scholars believe that there is a direct causal relationship between the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust, however, some of them do not believe that there is a direct causal relationship between the two genocides.