Langue vernaculaire, image universelle : De la fiction arménienne au Liban

Abstract

The number of Armenians in Lebanon exceeded one hundred thousand inhabitants before 1975, the date of the start of the civil war. Currently the Armenian community of Lebanon is endangered, particularly due to its language and the current demographic decline. In 2010, UNESCO included Western Armenian on the list of endangered languages. The same year, filmmaker Vatché Boulghourjian directed a fiction film in western Armenian “The Fifth Column”. The film has a significant cinematic language both by its content and its form. The usage of the Western Armenian language by the characters within the film reframes the plot in a context of post-memory and transgenerational trauma.