The Lark Farm

Last updated
The Lark Farm
La Masseria Delle Allodole.jpg
La masseria delle allodole
Directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
Screenplay by Antonia Arslan
Starring Paz Vega
Moritz Bleibtreu
Alessandro Preziosi
Cinematography Giuseppe Lanci
Edited by Roberto Perpignani
Music by Giuliano Taviani
Release date
Running time
122 minutes
CountryItaly
Budget€10 million

The Lark Farm (Italian: La masseria delle allodole) is a 2007 Italian drama film directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani about the Armenian genocide.

Contents

Plot

The story, drawn from La masseria delle allodole, the best-selling novel by Antonia Arslan, tells about the Avakian clan, an Armenian family living in Turkey and having two houses. The Avakians feel convinced that the rising tide of Turkish hostility on the horizon means little to them and will scarcely affect their day-to-day lives. The Avakians do not pay attention to the warning signs, and set about preparing for a family reunion with the impending visit of two well-to-do sons - landowner Aram, who resides in Turkey, and Assadour, a physician living in Venice. These illusions come crashing down when a Turkish military regiment crops up at the house, annihilates every male member of the family and forces the ladies to trek off into the Syrian desert, where they will be left to rot. With them goes one of the little boys of the family, who was dressed as a girl in order not to be killed. Along the journey, the Turks continue to commit horrible atrocities, including forcing an Armenian mother to crush her newborn baby son to death. Meanwhile, a handsome Turkish officer (Moritz Bleibtreu) falls in love with Aram's daughter and makes an aggressive attempt to deliver her from certain death, even as the circumstances surrounding him attest to the astounding difficulty of doing so. Upon being given orders to burn the women alive, he chooses to behead her.

Cast

See also


Related Research Articles

<i>The Forty Days of Musa Dagh</i> 1933 novel by Franz Werfel

The Forty Days of Musa Dagh is a 1933 novel by Austrian-Bohemian writer Franz Werfel based on events that took place in 1915, during the second year of World War I and at the beginning of the Armenian genocide.

Armenian Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have total or partial Armenian ancestry. They form the second largest community of the Armenian diaspora after Armenians in Russia. The first major wave of Armenian immigration to the United States took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Thousands of Armenians settled in the United States following the Hamidian massacres of the mid-1890s, the Adana massacre of 1909, and the Armenian genocide of 1915–1918 in the Ottoman Empire. Since the 1950s many Armenians from the Middle East migrated to the United States as a result of political instability in the region. It accelerated in the late 1980s and has continued after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 due to socio-economic and political reasons. The Los Angeles area has the largest Armenian population in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deportation of Armenian intellectuals on 24 April 1915</span> Start of Armenian genocide

The deportation of Armenian intellectuals is conventionally held to mark the beginning of the Armenian genocide. Leaders of the Armenian community in the Ottoman capital of Constantinople, and later other locations, were arrested and moved to two holding centers near Angora. The order to do so was given by Minister of the Interior Talaat Pasha on 24 April 1915. On that night, the first wave of 235 to 270 Armenian intellectuals of Constantinople were arrested. With the adoption of the Tehcir Law on 29 May 1915, these detainees were later relocated within the Ottoman Empire; most of them were ultimately killed. More than 80 such as Vrtanes Papazian, Aram Andonian, and Komitas survived.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Labour battalions (Turkey)</span> Form of unfree labour in the late Ottoman Empire

Ottoman labour battalions was a form of unfree labour in the late Ottoman Empire. The term is associated with the disarmament and murder of Ottoman Armenian soldiers during World War I, of Ottoman Greeks during the Greek genocide in the Ottoman Empire and also during the Turkish War of Independence.

<i>Aram</i> (film) 2002 French film

Aram is a 2002 French action drama film written and directed by Robert Kechichian. The film is set primarily in France between 1993 and 2001 around Aram, a young French-Armenian militant attempting to supply arms to Nagorno-Karabakh and dealing with the aftermath of assassinating a Turkish general. Aram was released in 2002 in theatres in France, and made its American debut in 2004 at the Armenian Film Festival in San Francisco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Operation Nemesis</span> 1920–1922 assassinations of Ottoman officials by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation

Operation Nemesis was a program to assassinate both Ottoman perpetrators of the Armenian genocide and officials of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic most responsible for the massacre of Armenians during the September Days of 1918 in Baku. Masterminded by Shahan Natalie, Armen Garo, and Aaron Sachaklian, it was named after the Greek goddess of divine retribution, Nemesis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Armenian Cypriots</span> Ethnic Armenians living in Cyprus

Armenians in Cyprus or Armenian-Cypriots are ethnic Armenians who live in Cyprus. They are a recognized minority with their own language, schools and churches. Despite the relatively small number of Armenians living in Cyprus, the Armenian-Cypriot community has had a significant impact upon the Armenian diaspora and Armenian people. During the Middle Ages, Cyprus had an extensive connection with the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, while the Ganchvor monastery had an important presence in Famagusta. During the Ottoman Era, the Virgin Mary church and the Magaravank were very prominent. Certain Armenian-Cypriots were or are very prominent on a Panarmenian or international level and the fact that, for nearly half a century, the survivors of the Armenian genocide have co-operated and co-existed peacefully with the Turkish-Cypriots is perhaps a unique phenomenon across the Armenian Diaspora. The emigration of a large number of Armenian-Cypriots to the United Kingdom has virtually shaped today's British-Armenian community.

<i>The Memoirs of Naim Bey</i>

The Memoirs of Naim Bey: Turkish Official Documents Relating to the Deportation and the Massacres of Armenians, containing the Talat Pasha telegrams, is a book published by historian and journalist Aram Andonian in 1919. Originally redacted in Armenian, it was popularized worldwide through the English edition published by Hodder & Stoughton of London. It includes several documents (telegrams) that constitute evidence that the Armenian genocide was formally implemented as Ottoman Empire policy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antonia Arslan</span> Italian writer and academic of Armenian origin

Antonia Arslan is an Italian writer and academic of Armenian origin.

Andrea Crisanti was an Italian production designer and art director.

Ra's al-'Ayn camps were desert death camps near Ra's al-'Ayn city, where many Armenians were deported and slaughtered during the Armenian genocide. The site became "synonymous with Armenian suffering".

Hidden Armenians or crypto-Armenians is an umbrella term to describe Turkish citizens hiding their full or partial Armenian ancestry from the larger Turkish society. They are mostly descendants of Ottoman Armenians who, at least outwardly, were Islamized "under the threat of physical extermination" during the Armenian genocide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aram Haigaz</span> Armenian writer

Aram Haigaz was the pen name of Aram Chekenian, an Armenian-American writer. He was born in the town of Şebinkarahisar in the Ottoman Empire and survived the Armenian genocide in 1915. He was a young boy when his birthplace was attacked, and his first book, The Fall of the Aerie, published in English translation in 1935, is often cited by scholars and historians for its eyewitness details. He wrote ten books in his lifetime, as well as articles and essays for Armenian newspapers and magazines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Battle of Holy Apostles Monastery</span>

The Battle of Holy Apostles Monastery was an armed conflict between Ottoman Empire forces and Armenian militia at the Holy Apostles (Arakhelots) Monastery near Mush, Ottoman Empire in November 1901.

Armenian genocide in culture includes the ways in which people have represented the Armenian genocide of 1915 in art, literature, music, and films. Furthermore, there are dozens of Armenian genocide memorials around the world. According to historian Margaret Lavinia Anderson, the Armenian genocide had reached an "iconic status" as "the apex of horrors conceivable" prior to World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cemal Azmi</span> Ottoman politician and governor

Cemal Azmi, also spelled Jemal Azmi, was an Ottoman politician and governor of the Trebizond Vilayet (province) during World War I and the final years of the Ottoman Empire. He was one of the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide and was mainly responsible for the liquidation of Armenians in Trebizond Vilayet. He was known as the "butcher of Trebizond".

The following lists events that happened during 2014 in Armenia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gourgen Yanikian</span> Armenian assassin

Gourgen Mkrtich Yanikian was an Armenian genocide survivor. He is best known for the assassination of two Turkish consular officials, Consul General Mehmet Baydar and Consul Bahadır Demir. The event took place in Santa Barbara, California in 1973.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harpoot</span> Ancient Fortress City in Elazığ, Turkey

Harpoot or Kharberd is an ancient town located in the Elazığ Province of Turkey. It now forms a small district of the city of Elazığ. In the late Ottoman period, it fell under the Mamuret-ul-Aziz Vilayet. Artifacts from around 2000 BC have been found in the area. The town is famous for its Harput Castle, and incorporates a museum, old mosques, a church, and the Buzluk (Ice) Cave. Harput is about 700 miles (1,100 km) from Istanbul.

<i>Operation Nemesis</i> (book)

Operation Nemesis: The Assassination Plot that Avenged the Armenian Genocide is a 2015 book by Eric Bogosian about Operation Nemesis, a plan to kill the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide.