Reviews by EVN Report

Lory Bedikian’s book of poetry “Jagadakeer: Apology to the Body” is a poignant exploration of immigrant trauma, familial bonds, identity and mortality. It announces and denounces our fears and some of our most innermost pain with prescient beauty and rare honesty, writes Christopher Atamian in this review.

Blending the two worlds of theater and cinema, Atom Egoyan’s new film “Seven Veils”—named for the biblical character Salome whose seductive dancing earns her the severed head of John the Baptist—portrays Salome not as a cruel femme fatale but as a victim.

Aida Zilelian’s "All the Ways We Lied" follows the complex lives of the Manoukian sisters in Queens, New York. Tackling themes of trauma, identity, and resilience, Zilelian presents a raw, authentic portrayal of a middle-class immigrant family grappling with their past and present. A review by Christopher Atamian.

How can we tell an important story that has been forgotten? Arsinee Khanjian’s answer to this question has been to take the impact of the story, and make it inevitable. That is what the 2015 performance called Auction of Souls, which was again on stage at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin this year, did.

Historian Elyse Semerdjian’s book, Remnants: Embodied Archives of the Armenian Genocide, presents an innovative approach to writing history. She blends disciplines and challenging narratives to reveal the understudied female experience of the Armenian genocide.

An Armenian film, “1489” won the Main Jury and the International Federation of Film Critics prizes at the International Documentary Film Festival of Amsterdam in 2023 amid upheaval and controversy that triggered a series of withdrawals and boycotts of the festival for its perceived silence regarding Israel’s invasion of Gaza.

In a voluminous collection of texts, historian and former diplomat Jirair Libaridian examines the reasons behind the moral, military and intellectual defeat of the Armenian elite in the context of three issues: the contemporary history of the Republic of Armenia, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and Armenian-Turkish relations.

For the first time, a book in English traces the history of the Social Democrat Hunchak Party, which has been largely overlooked in Armenian historiography.

A recent exhibition “The Guises of the Nude: Perceptions of Nudity in Armenian Graphic Arts” provided a powerful opportunity to challenge prevailing meta-narratives and foster a self-reflective dialogue that can contribute to the broader project of decolonization and social transformation.

A review of an exhibition in the village of Verishen in Armenia’s Syunik region featuring a contemporary carpet collection by Goris-born artist Davit Kochunts, examines the concept of social space and the process of territorialization.