Uncovering the Forbidden Past: An Armenian Odyssey
Ani Hovannisian has been a reporter and anchor on Armenian television for over a decade and is actively involved with the Armenian community in California and worldwide. She is a member of the Directors Guild of America, Television Academy, and International Documentary Association.
Over the course of four trips and seven years, Hovannisian completed this documentary born of her daring journeys through the forbidden lands of her ancestral past. While documenting evidence of thousands of years of Armenian creation and ultimate decimation in modern-day Turkey, she met a Scottish explorer who had discovered these mysterious lands 30 years earlier. Ani returned with a tiny team, and together the duo dug beneath the surface, uncovering buried secrets, sacred relics, silenced voices, and the hidden map.
Directed, produced, written, and narrated by Hovannisian, The Hidden Map debuted nationwide on NBCLX the weekend of April 24, 2021 to coincide with Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. Several encore presentations followed, including multiple popular PBS SoCal broadcasts.
Ms. Hovannisian's Athenaeum presentation is the annual Mgrublian Lecture on Armenian Studies and will highlight the history and the journey of her family and the Armenian people – those who survived the genocide and those who did not—and is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College.