Synopsis
Originally created as a grand video installation, Jacques Kebadian’s A Wall Against Oblivion is a monumental project bringing together filmed testimonies of Armenian Genocide survivors. The work captures personal memories and experiences spanning the Asia Minor peninsula, the backdrop of the deportations and mass killings of Armenians and other Christian minorities by the Ottoman Empire. A Wall Against Oblivion 3 focuses specifically on testimonies from the regions of Kharpert, Cilicia, Erzurum, Malatya, and Van, edited into a 42-minute documentary film.
Jacques Kebadian
Jacques Kebadian was born in France in 1940, to Armenian parents who emigrated in the 1920s. In 1964, he graduated from IDHEC. From 1965 to 1969, he was Robert Bresson’s assistant for the films Au hasard Balthazar, Histoire de Mouchette, and Une femme douce. After his first feature film (Trotsky in 1967) he turned to documentary cinema. From the 1980s, after the death of his father, Jacques Kebadian felt the need to return to his origins, to meet the mythical country that his father told him about. In 1981, he made Armenia 1900, which he dedicated to his father. In 1982, he was one of the founders of AAA (Association Audiovisuelle Arménienne) whose objectives are to broadcast films by filmmakers from Armenia and the diaspora. Afterwards several essential films relating to Armenia and its history were released, such as Sans retour possible (1983), Que sont mes camarades devenus (1984). Les cinq sœurs in 1985, Mémoire arménienne in 1993, and finally, Vingt ans après, in 2002 completes this return to roots. Kebadian is interested in the history of peoples - uprooted, exiled, namely the history of Armenians and their diaspora, but also that of the dancers of the Royal Ballet in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge genocide (Apsaras (1986) or of African families without papers (D’une brousse à l’autre), and much more.
Selected Filmography
Trotsky (1967), Armenia 1900 (1981), Twenty Years in Georgia (1982), Sans retour possible (1983), The Memory of the Children of Armenia (1983), Que sont mes camarades devenus (1984), Les cinq sœurs (1985), Apsaras (1986), Mémoire arménienne (1993), D'une brousse à l'autre (1998), Vingt ans après (2002), Armenian Memory, Memories of Armenia (2004), Fragile Stories from Armenia (2015), A Wall Against Oblivion 3 (2026).
