Winner 2012: Lusine Sahakyan
Lusine Sahakyan is a professor of Turkic Studies at Yerevan State University in Armenia. Author of three books Dr. Sahakyan spent two years making “Hamshen at Crossroads of Past and Present”, a film dedicated to the current state of the descendants of the Armenians of Hamshen, a people who were forcibly Islamicized (”Turkified”) by the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century.
“Hamshen at Crossroads of Past and Present”: The film explores the practice of forced Islamization, as a form of ethnic cleansing.
Lusine received the prestigious Armin T. Wegner Humanitarian Award at the 15th Annual Arpa International Film Festival on December 2, 2012.
Dr. Lusine Sahakyan, the winner of the 2012 Armin T. Wegner Humanitarian Award, alongside Sylvia Minassian, the founder of the Arpa Foundation for Film, Music and Art (AFFMA).