LEXINGTON, Mass. — “Lights! Camera! Stories!,” a collaboration between the Armenian Women’s Welfare Association (AWWA) and Armenian International Women’s Association (AIWA), held at the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum and Library on Sunday, September 23, attracted a large, diverse audience for an afternoon with filmmaker Bared Maronian.
Event chair Nicole Babikian Hajjar introduced Maronian, a veteran documentarian who has won several regional Emmy Awards, as a born storyteller. “This man knows how to put the story in history,” she said.
“We hope [this event] can inspire many more collaborations,” Hajjar said.
The program raised about $18,000, which will be divided between the two sponsoring organizations for their projects, the Hanganak NGO Clinic Elderly Project in Stepanakert, Artsakh, and the Women’s Support Center in Yerevan.
Maronian showed an abbreviated version of his award-winning 2016 film, “Women of the Genocide,” with clips about some Armenian women, such as Genocide survivor Aurora Mardiganian, as well as non-Armenian rescuers such as Danish Missionary Maria Jacobsen.
He also showed footage he had shot during the Velvet Revolution in April and the upcoming “Titanic Love,” about descendants of two Armenian survivors who had boarded the ill-fated ship. Six people from the same village, Keghi, were fleeing the Hamidian massacres.