In recent years, Aurora Mardiganian’s name has become familiar to wider audiences thanks to the rediscovery of “Ravished Armenia,” the silent film in which she portrayed her own story, and also due to the Aurora Humanitarian Prize established by Ruben Vardanyan and Noubar Afeyan. In Armenia, however, a researcher has begun to view Aurora (Arshaluys) Mardiganian in a different context: as one of several Armenian women who appeared in silent cinema.
For nearly a year, Ruzan Bagratunyan has been studying Armenian actresses, as well as the technicians and administrators who contributed to early film, and published a book on them in 2024.
In a Zoom conversation, Ruzan remarked about Mardiganian: “Her story was exceptional not only for Armenian history but for global history as well. Mardiganian is the only known female Genocide survivor to portray herself in a motion picture. While performing, she relived the horrors of the Genocide, and once even fainted on stage during a presentation.”
Aurora was not the only Armenian woman active in early American cinema. Flora Zabelle Hitchcock came to the United States after the Hamidian Massacres. She married the silent film actor Raymond Hitchcock, and together they performed in multiple Broadway productions in New York. Some sources suggest that she appeared in the 1911 version of “The Red Widow,” which would make her the first known Armenian actress of a silent film. Unfortunately, this 1911 film is lost.
After her, the first instance of a film which has reached our times with an Armenian actress dates from 1913, when Armenian actress Mariam Grigoryan — known as Zhasmen — appeared in “The Keys to Happiness,” a two-part Russian silent film. Originally from Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi, Georgia), Zhasmen played numerous roles in Armenian, Georgian, and Azerbaijani cinema after returning to the Caucasus. Ruzan’s research illuminates the important role Armenians played in the formation of Azerbaijani cinematography: Hamo Beknazaryan directed some of Azerbaijan’s earliest films, and Armenian actors, including Zhasmen, were part of his teams.
The same is true of early Ottoman-Turkish cinema. When Muhsin Ertuğrul began directing the first Turkish films, numerous Armenians worked in the industry, including Siranush Aleksanian, Roza Felekian, Azniv Minakian, Vahram Papazian, Onnik Binemecian, and others.
