Category: Press Release

THE LILLIAN & VARNUM PAUL 2013 SCREENWRITING AWARD
FINALISTS AND JURY ANNOUNCED

LOS ANGELES, California – The Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance (ADAA) is pleased to announce the three finalists of the 4th Biennial Lillian & Varnum Paul 2013 Screenwriting Award: “1915,” by Garin K. Hovannisian & Alec Mouhibian; “The 13th Image,” by Yervand Kochar in collaboration with Jeani Di Carlo; and “The Second Journey,” by Levon Minasian & Eric de Rocquefeuil.

Screenplay submissions were received from across the United States, Europe, and Armenia. Entries were required to be full-length, unproduced film scripts written in English and based on Armenian themes. The screenplays submitted were of high quality, which made the selections difficult for the first round judges, all of whom are industry professionals.

The three finalist screenplays will be evaluated by an esteemed honorary jury: Anahid Nazarian (Producer, American Zoetrope Productions), Michael Goorjian (Emmy-Winning Actor) and Hank Saroyan (Emmy Winning TV Producer).

The winner of the $10,000 grand prize will be announced at ADAA’s awards event on November 8, 2013 at the Writers Guild of America Theater in Beverly Hills, along with a high-profile panel discussion for young artists navigating their careers in Hollywood — Making the Connection: Linking Armenians in the Entertainment Industry. The panel will feature high-ranking industry professionals from film studios. This is a rare opportunity to learn key strategies straight from current industry leaders. A wine and cheese reception will follow. Tickets are $10/person and available on http://www.itsmyseat.com//events/232924.html.

The Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance’s mission is to make the Armenian voice heard on the world stage through the dramatic arts of theatre and film. The organization accomplishes this mission by supporting playwrights and screenwriters and providing production opportunities, research tools, networking resources and writing awards.

The Lillian and Varnum Paul Screenwriting Award is administered by ADAA through the generosity of the Paul Family through the Western Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, under the auspices of His Eminence Archbishop Hovnan Derderian, Primate of the Western Diocese.

In addition to the $10,000 Lillian and Varnum Paul Screenwriting Award, ADAA administers the $10,000 William Saroyan Prize for Playwriting, the deadline for which is April 15, 2014.

For more information about ADAA, its activities and how to contribute to its important mission, please visit http://www.itsmyseat.com/events/232924.html or www.armeniandrama.org.

A newly published bibliography covering literary publications on the Armenian Genocide will now serve as a key to the multitude of works written on this important chapter in history.

Bibliographer Eddie Yeghiayan, Ph.D., has gathered a vast and extensive library of material on the Armenian Genocide, providing copious notes and details on the major works that have dealt with the destruction of the Armenians during World War I. In the “Armenian Genocide Bibliography,” Yeghiayan has arranged a library of information to help us gain a better grasp of the thousands of publications covering the genocide.

Of course, any bibliography that aspires to furnish an exhaustive collection of literature on so broad a topic as the Armenian Genocide will always fall just short of completeness. The voluminous documentation that exists on the systematic extermination of the Armenians during the First World War ranges from contemporary articles published in newspapers and journals worldwide, in the reports, correspondence, diaries, and memoirs of military men and statesmen, the eyewitness testimony of survivors, missionaries, relief officials, and officials in the diplomatic corps, to material from the archives of the United States, Europe, and the Near East, to say nothing about the numerous studies published in the realm of academia. Looking past the problems inherent in so daunting an enterprise, it is nonetheless surprising that no dedicated bibliography on the Armenian Genocide has appeared since Richard G. Hovannisian’s The Armenian Holocaust: A Bibliography Relating to the Deportations, Massacres, and Dispersion of the Armenian People, 1915-1923 in 1980.

It was in order to fill this gap, to provide to the scholar and the layman alike a clear and accessible work of reference that Dr. Eddie Yeghiayan of the University of California, Irvine undertook the painstaking process of compiling a comprehensive bibliography on the Armenian Genocide. The descendant of survivors of the massacres and deportations, Yeghiayan has not only drawn from scholarly books, articles, and print media, but has also produced lists of works published in the fields of the arts and literature, as well as in the medium of television, documentaries, and the Internet. At over a thousand pages long and the product of five years’ of research, he has collated a vast and diverse array of material and presented it to the reader in a cogent and gracefully organized format. The Armenian Genocide: A Bibliography will prove to be the definitive work for reference and consultation for a new generation of scholars and individuals keen on learning about the first major humanitarian crisis of the twentieth century.

The Center for Armenian Remembrance is proud to bring the first of its kind digital archive of this vast collection of publications. The bibliography is available to the public and fully searchable at http://www.centerar.org/bibliography/.

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