Hasmik Poghosyan: Armenian Culture Ministry has nothing to do with international Film Festival "Conflict and Reconciliation"

• Thursday, March 14, 21:49

The Armenian Culture Ministry has absolutely nothing to do with the international Film Festival "Conflict and Reconciliation in the Central- Eastern European
Cinema", which was strongly criticized by the Armenian Council of the Great Patriotic War and Labor Veterans on March 14. 

Armenian Minister of Culture Hasmik Poghosyan told ArmInfo's correspondent that the Culture Ministry had not even been informed that a festival would be held and what films would be shown at the festival, which was held exclusively on a commercial basis. "They have applied to us neither for support nor even for a cinema hall. As far as I understand, the festival was organized privately on the basis of a commercial agreement between the organizers and the leadership of Moscow Cinema, which is not under jurisdiction of the Culture Ministry", she said. 

Poghosyan added that as a citizen of Armenia, the country that lost 300,000 sons at the Great Patriotic War, she highly venerates the memory of the deceased heroes and understands the veterans' indignation at some films' different view of the years when the nations of a single country were saving the world from the hawkish national-socialism - elementary fascism that took dozens of millions of lives.   

To recall, the international Film Festival "Conflict and Reconciliation in the Central- Eastern European Cinema", which started in Yerevan on Feb 13, has been strongly criticized by the veterans of the Great Patriotic War. The veterans got indignant at the foreign films included in the festival, which depict the Soviet
Army in unsavory light.    

The film festival will last till April 10. It is being held with the support of the UN Office in Armenia, as well as the Embassies of Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Ukraine.

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