New project documenting Kurdish stories to launch with film in Erbil on Sunday

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A new organization that aims to document events in modern Kurdish history with vibrant multi-media stories and interviews will launch its ambitious project with a documentary film premiere in the capital of the Kurdistan Region.

The Kurdistan Memory Programme (KMP) will host a reception, a screening of “One Yazidi (Ezidi) Family vs. ISIS,” and a Q&A session on Sunday night at a popular Erbil movie theater as part of its mission to fill the role of a national archive of the Kurdish people’s experience.

“History is not just about winners and losers. It is about people. Their experiences, told and remembered in the form of personal stories passed through generations, are the oral heritage of a nation’s triumphs and tragedies,” the KMP’s website reads.

“And yet, with most of the world’s historical resources, normal people – the flesh, blood, and minds of a nation – are ignored in [favor] of the dusty, secondary opinions found in unread library books.”

The KMP, it continues, is taking a different approach. “It aims to record Kurdish history in sound and living [color], definitively documenting the unique voices of Kurdistan for future generations.”

This approach builds on the basic archiving philosophy of groups like the Shoah Foundation started in 1994 by director Stephen Spielberg to create a lasting archive of video testimony of survivors of the Jewish Holocaust in World War II while they were still alive and able to share their stories.

During Saddam Hussein’s persecution of the Kurds, which culminated in the Anfal military campaign of 1988, up to 182,000 people died and over 4,000 villages were cleared and destroyed,  the KMP explains.

“Yet, much of this history has not been told to the outside world, and it is only now that the genocidal scope of Saddam’s Anfal and its impact on Kurdish lives is becoming clear. It is vital that this massive attack on the Kurds and others like it are documented, verified and more widely acknowledged.”

The group calls the Anfal “a defining influence on the modern Kurdish identity and a key event in the political history of the Middle East.”

“This important truth, so often ignored, needs to be [recognized] by the global community as well as young people both inside and outside of” the Kurdistan Region.

The KMP also seeks to expand its mission past video interviews alone to include various multi-media to make images and stories come alive.

At its first public event, in collaboration with Kurdistan 24, the KMP will present a striking documentary film that deals a more recent defining era in Kurdish history, the rise of the Islamic State and its effect on civilian populations.

Audiences will not only experience the KMP’s unique approach to keeping Kurdish stories alive and easily accessible but will have a chance to participate in and learn from a Q&A session that will follow with the group’s international director. 

Admission to the event is free of charge.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany