This is educational and country-studies work done in the form of live documentation in the formerly Azerbaijani-inhabited villages of Vayots Dzor, Tavush and Gegharkunik.
The heroes of the series are people whose fates have been split because of Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.
Although the heroes and their stories will be different the history is usually the same: the war destroyed and separated families, cut off ties, deprived them of their homeland and took them away by migration routes.
How did two nations live together, and what happened? What was it that undermined that solidarity? How did people pass the road of emigration? What did they leave in their homeland? How have they overcome the challenges of resettlement? How have their personal and professional lives been arranged? What makes them happy and what are they concerned about today? What have they brought from their homeland? How has their everyday life changed? What have they brought to their new settlement which is also their fatherland. The answers to these questions will be reflected in the project in a series of meetings. Eventually, some pages of the modern History of Armenia are being narrated with this project.
The educational project presenting a series of portrait interviews “From Home to Home:People, Fates” is significant: in its kind, it is a dialogue of peace.
Through education and manifestation of humanism it will be possible to arise impulses of peace in the region and to deny the hostile attitude between the two nations with peaceful manifestation. Armenia and Azerbaijan don’t have other ties. People can’t talk to one another, there isn’t any personal contact, any sphere of cooperation, therefore, this project is a wonderful opportunity for the people to begin conversing.
The project will give the inhabitants of the Armenian and Azerbaijani villages an opportunity to be on the other side of the border and once again see their houses, close relations’ graves and historical monuments.
The content of the project
- History: origin, birth, homeland, emigration
- Dialect
- Culture, historical monuments (graves, churches, mosques)
- Documentation
- Ethnography
- Everyday life, customs (cuisine)
- Ties and contacts, visits to homeland
The heroes of the project are dreamers. They have emigrated from their settlements, homes and found themselves among their own people, have got new houses, but have preserved the dream of their previous houses and want to transmit these dreams to their children and grandchildren.
In order to turn the conflict into a bridge, it is important that such educational projects also be born in neibouring Azerbaijan.
- Presenting stories about the Azerbaijanis emigrated from Armenia: about their former everyday life in Armenia, friendship, kind memories
- Presenting Armenian traces in the Azerbaijani villages formerly inhabited by Armenians
An episode of the project in the village of Goghtanik, in the Gorge of Yeghegis in Vayots Dzor province. Meeting with Mariam Hovhannisyan whose origin was in the village of Shurut in Nakhijevan and then got married in the village of Bist and then emigrated to the village of Goghtanik in Armenia.
Translator: Yura Ganjalyan