| Ravished Armenia | |
|---|---|
Promotional poster for the film Ravished Armenia |
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| Directed by | Oscar Apfel |
| Produced by | William Nicholas Selig |
| Written by | Harvey Gates Aurora Mardiganian Nora Waln |
| Starring | Aurora Mardiganian Irvin Cummings Anna Q. Nilsson Henry Morgenthau Lillian West |
| Distributed by | First National Pictures |
| Release date(s) | January 19, 1919 |
| Language | English |
Ravished Armenia is the title of both a book written in 1918 by Arshaluys (Aurora) Mardiganian about her experiences in the Armenian Genocide and the Hollywood film based on it that was filmed in 1919.
According to a contemporary New York Times article, the first half of the film shows "Armenia as it was before Turkish and German devastation, and led up to the deportation of priests and thousands of families into the desert.
One of the concluding scenes showed young Armenian women flogged for their refusal to enter Turkish harems and depicted the Turkish slave markets."[1] All known complete copies of the film have since been lost, but Mardiganian's account is still in print.[2]
Contents |
A restored and edited 24-minute segment of the historic motion picture was released in 2009 by the Armenian Genocide Resource Center of Northern California. It is based on a rare surviving reel of film edited in Soviet Armenia. It includes a music score, an introduction, 125 subtitles, and a slideshow of several black-white production stills. The DVD is distributed by Heritage Publishing, Richmond, California, and is copyrighted by Richard Kloian.