The Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC Australia) has partnered with Sydney-based filmmaker, Shahane Bekarian to produce the first Australian-made documentary on the Armenian Genocide. Today, ANC Australia launched a crowdfunding campaign with Kickstarter to help raise funds for this project.

The film, titled “Children of the Genocide,” is drawing on archival footage of interviews with Australia-based survivors of the Armenian Genocide, who are now no longer alive. It also features interviews with their descendants, currently living in Australia.

They have set up a Kickstarter campaign where one can easily pledge to donate. Click here to see and donate.

“This is the first such film produced in our community, and through this grassroots fundraising campaign on Kickstarter, members of our community can be part of this historic project,” said ANC Australia Community Relations Director, Stephen Abolakian.

“Children of the Genocide”  is described as “an examination of the sentiment of Armenians in Australia 100 years after the genocide which saw them flee their motherland after World War One. The issue to be explored relates to the surviving Armenians who found refuge in Australia. Although they fled to survive, we explore wether relocation is enough to settle the attempt of genocide and the upheaval from their homeland. After their families were brutally killed and their livelihood destroyed, was surviving enough? What basic human needs remained unsettled? Perhaps the success in maintaining their hereditary can only be measured by the strength of their new roots in Australia, the stability of life they have laid out for their kids and the separation they have made from racial intolerance. Is Australia the place? Have they gone down the path of cultural assimilation or integration in Australian society?”

ANC Australia is seeking to raise $20,000 to help fund the production of this film, which is set for a release in 2015, on the Centenary year of the Armenian Genocide.