CARLA: Hello, I'm Carla Garapedian.

I'm an Armenian- American filmmaker, director, writer, and broadcaster.

It's my pleasure to be with you for this special streaming of Armenia, My Home.

You'll be able to stream the first act of this 60-minute documentary right here.

And if you become a member of this PBS station by making a contribution, you'll receive access to an exclusive member benefit called PBS Passport.

With Passport, you can stream the entire 60-minute program.

You can make your contribution and begin your Passport experience right now by scanning the QR code or going to our website on your screen to give.

Your contribution makes all the programs you enjoy on TV, online, and on the PBS app possible.

Thank you for your support of Armenia, My Home.

-[ Women singing in Armenian ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Singing continues ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -Armenia.

A small country of nearly 3 million people, located north of Iran and south of Georgia.

Its history goes back millennia.

♪♪ Armenia was the first nation to adopt Christianity as the official state religion in the early 4th century.

The Armenians have their own language and rich cultural and intellectual traditions.

In the 1500s, the Armenians were absorbed into the Islamic Ottoman Empire, where they lived under a system that allowed them to live side by side with the Ottomans but often relegated them to a lower status.

In the early 20th century, the Ottomans turned on the Armenians and committed genocide, slaughtering as many as 1.5 million Armenians in the most violent ways imaginable.

To this day, the Ottomans' successor, the Turkish government, denies the genocide ever happened.

Ultimately, a small part of the historic Armenian homeland was absorbed into the Soviet Union, where Armenians lived under communist rule.

This land became free in 1991.

This is the land that today we call Armenia.

♪♪ -To a certain extent, Armenia is a state of mind.

Certainly when I was a child, that was the case because when I would go to Armenia, I wasn't going to a Soviet republic.

I was going to my grandparents' house in Tuckahoe, New York, where the vinyl record albums were Armenian, where a lot of the books were Armenian, where my grandmother tried to teach me the Armenian alphabet.

The notion that there's a piece of earth called Armenia that's part of the Soviet Union wasn't something that was top of mind to an Armenian diasporic kid in Westchester in the 1960s and the 1970s.

♪♪ -I remember when I was a kid, one day, my father brought a globe of the world.

You know, like a globe.

And it was a small globe like this.

And like every Armenian, the first thing you do is look for Armenia, you know?

And we were kids.

There were, like, three, four of us.

We got together, and we're looking for Armenia, and it's not there.

And it was so disappointing.

I literally started crying.

"There is no Armenia.

You've been lying all this time."

It was like, "No.

It's there.

It's too small.

You can't see."

♪♪ -Although it was one of the republics of the Soviet Union, we grew up with Armenia as part of our lives.

♪♪ -In those days, they had shortwave radios and Armenia had programs.

And every night, we would listen on shortwave radio, Armenian programs, recitations, things like that.

We knew we had a country not free, not independent, but at the same time, it was Armenia.

-My father was a survivor of the genocide.

And my mother was born and raised in Beirut.

And for them, Armenia was the only thing that was supposed to keep us alive.

We idealized the Armenia in our minds.

And you think in Armenia there are no pickpockets, there is no theft, there is no crime.

You know, it's this ideal place.

-The first time I went to Armenia was 1964.

Coming there, I suddenly realized, "Whoa, These people are accepting me as some kind of relative."

But it was very easy to get used to it.

The food was familiar, the language I was studying.

And they accepted me as if I was, you know, a barekam -- a friend, a relative.

That word, by the way, barekam, is used both for "friend" and "relative" in Armenian.

So I fell in love with the place.

♪♪ -I remember packing a suitcase, and my friend helped me, and I had all kinds of things in it because we knew when you went, you would take things like gum, jeans.

And she said to me, "How come you're taking all this?

You know, who -- Do you have relatives?"

I said, "No.

When you're Armenian, like, everybody's your relative."

-I had the opportunity to actually go to Armenia as a senior in high school.

It was 1981.

Now, Armenia at that time was Soviet.

It was Soviet Armenia.

♪♪ None of the food was the food that I had had at my grandparents'.

Um, really, none of the music, except the church music, was familiar at all.

There was no pineapple or banana.

We had mulberries.

It was just a very, very different place, but incredibly special.

-Driving by bus from Moscow south in 1987.

I was with my family.

Watching the landscape change as you got to the Northern Caucasus was extraordinary.

A transformative journey.

♪♪ You start seeing Armenian architecture, medieval churches, this beautiful, lush and sometimes dry and mountainous landscape moving through it.

Getting to Yerevan, uh, on a late summer evening in 1987, was entering a new zone.

Soviet.

Armenian.

Put those two together.

It was one of the great journeys of my life.

♪♪ -One thing that -- It was a kind of a custom, especially New Year's, like, 12:00 when time changes.

And there was one song that the community would sing.

Everybody would stand up and say, "I hope next year Armenia will be free."

That was the community attitude.

Everybody would sing that song.

-[ Singing in Armenian ] -"Hopefully next year Armenia will be free.

And Armenia will be free.

Armenia will be free."

♪♪ -This concept of Armenia was this dream that we were working towards.

So that was infused for me from a very young age, just this idea of this, like, magical Camelot.

-We named my daughter Yeraz because that means "dream."

And that was for Armenia to be independent again one day.

And which was.

1990, '91, it became independent.

So our dream came true.

-[ Speaking Armenian ] -Whoever thought that Soviet Union would fall, whoever thought that Armenia was going to become an independent nation again, it was -- No.

It was completely unreal.

And, yes, we were elated.

[ Rhythmic clapping ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -It's kind of a miraculous thing if you're an Armenian.

All of a sudden, there's an Armenian state on the map.

-[ Singing in Armenian ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -This becomes a new center of gravity for Armenians worldwide.

They have a nation.

They have a place.

Yerevan is its capital.

-Today, the little republic of Armenia is a fraction of what was historic Armenia.

♪♪ -The idea of Armenia was almost easy.

This is a people who came out of a desperate, miserable situation at the beginning of the 20th century, post-genocide, just looking for safety, refuge.

And they found it in different places.

And then eventually they found it in the concept of an Armenia, a place that would be something to aspire to that is better than what came before.

♪♪ We didn't realize that -- that also means that you're now a landlord.

You own this place.

And that means the doors need to be fixed and the windows need to be fixed and the roof is often leaking.

This is a serious long-term commitment, and that's hard because you're switching from dream with no responsibilities to a real place with huge opportunity and responsibilities.

-[ Singing in Armenian ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -The first time I visited Armenia was in 1999.

And to sum up the experience, I would say it took the concept of Armenia from abstraction into reality.

♪♪ The moment I set foot on that ground, I said, "Okay.

So they weren't lying.

It exists."

-I love it when I get on the plane and everybody's speaking Armenian.

I get off the plane, and everybody's speaking Armenian.

-When I get off the plane in Armenia, I feel a sense of relief.

I feel a sense of peace.

I feel a sense of family.

-The policeman looked like my Uncle Johnny.

And they had the same color eyes and just looked the same.

And I don't know what I was expecting, but everybody was Armenian, naturally.

[ Laughs ] It was pretty exciting.

-I had never been to Armenia before, but when I got to Armenia, it really just felt like I came home.

♪♪ ♪♪ -Each country or nation has a cultural identity, and we have one that goes far back before the genocide into ancient history.

And that culture is full of all kinds of pride and poetry, like, a sense of who we are as a beautiful people.

♪♪ -The thing was, when we entered the space, uh, for Armenia, that's what everything was -- kind of became real.

This is a real thing with people... with their struggles, with their understanding, with their issues.

-Some things, I can't put into words.

We have something called in Armenian hogi and vogi.

It's your Armenian soul and spirit.

And that means a lot to Armenians.

The hogi.

You -- You just have this love of Armenia.

-It's a love that you don't know until you see it.

We come from a past that is thousands of years.

I cannot ignore that.

Whatever I do, it is part of -- You know, there's something in me, in my psyche, in my brain.

Uh, I carry that.

And when I went to Armenia, I mean, those things became alive.

♪♪ ♪♪ -I remember the first night I went to bed, and there was howling, uh, all night.

You know, dogs were fighting outside.

And so I was like, "Where did I come?

Where is this place?"

You know, there wasn't much electricity.

Water, uh, was a problem.

And the next morning, I got up, and here I was, walking down the street, smiling to everyone.

And, of course, no one smiled back.

They were like, "Who is this guy with two braids?"

-There were a lot of Armenians flying with us to Armenia.

And when we just about entered the kind of airspace of Armenia, someone said, "Mount Ararat!

Mount Ararat!

Mount Ararat!"

I kind of collapsed.

I had not seen Mount Ararat, you know, from -- Then when we landed, I mean, it was -- It was a sacred, you know -- As if you were visiting a sacred land, a sacred something that was within you but you had missed.

You didn't know.

Here's the reality.

Armenia, Armenia, Armenia.

But it's here.

It is real.

♪♪ -I think everyone remembers their first moment of seeing Ararat, you know, remembers that.

You see the mountain.

This is something that's so exhilarating.

-My daughter is only one fourth Armenian, and I was unprepared... to be standing with her... looking at Mount Ararat... across the border where it sits in Turkey -- not where it belongs, but where it is.

And my daughter was crying.

And suddenly I had all the feelings, too.

There was the geography of the Armenian soul.

Mount Ararat.

-Ararat.

The two majestic peaks of Sis and Masis.

Ararat is central to the Armenian story because, according to tradition, Noah's Ark landed on Ararat after the flood.

As the story goes, Noah and his wife were the great-grandparents of Hayk, who is known as the father of the Armenian people.

-So, every time when I watch the Mount Ararat, I see the resilience, Noah's resilience, salvation, and also the survival of humankind.

-My grandfather was very, um -- He was very Armenio-centric.

And so he had all these theories.

He had the theory about Noah's Ark making everybody in the world Armenian.

And he believed that there were many secret Armenians in the world.

Specifically for him, Cary Grant was Armenian, which, um -- I don't know if that's true or not.

-Indeed, my grandmother used to tell me that all of the world's population originally spoke Armenian.

My grandmother also told me that you had to speak Armenian because Armenian was the language of heaven.

Apparently there's an entrance exam to get in, and you better know your Armenian.

-I don't know what.

It's ingrained in our blood, I guess.

When you look at it, whether it's a picture or, of course, when you see it in real life, it's like -- I'm getting goosebumps thinking, "How do I explain that?"

I mean, I have no idea.

It just means so much to us.

♪♪ -I was completely speechless.

The weather was beautiful, and it was just quiet and peaceful and serene and completely untouched.

Um, and I think that that's one of the moments where I think my jaw was just open, just looking at where I was.

-It's a famous line from an Armenian poem.

"Ararat, you were ours, and then you were not ours."

So Ararat was part of Armenia.

And when the boundaries were drawn, Ararat was no longer a part of Armenia.

-When you see Mount Ararat, it's right there, the huge contradiction, the historical schism that we must experience as Armenians.

And, yet, it's not in Armenia.

It's in Turkey.

And that right there, I felt it when I was looking at it -- sort of an exhilaration and sadness at the same time.

-The whole issue of Ararat as Armenia's cultural symbol haunts the nation, because, of course, it's situated a mile on the other side of the border of the country that committed genocide against the Armenian people.

You can't find a more ironic, tragic, and inspiring natural symbol than Ararat for Armenians.

♪♪ -I live in Vermont, and my car has a vanity plate.

"ARARAT."

A-R-A-R-A-T. Twice -- Twice, I've met other cars that have the ARARAT license plate.

I met the new Jersey one, and I met the Massachusetts one.

Because it's a small Armenian community, and, obviously, at certain Armenian events, there's going to be multiple ARARAT cars if there are people from multiple states.

♪♪ -Ararat is so embedded in our culture, in our, uh, mentality, the way we're brought up.

This is why everywhere you go, all over the world -- all over the world -- you see Ararat football team, Ararat barber shop, Ararat old-age home, Ararat restaurant.

Everywhere.

Everywhere.

CARLA: Hello, I'm Carla Garapedian.

I'm an Armenian-American filmmaker, director, writer and broadcaster.

I hope you enjoyed streaming the first act of Armenia, My Home.

Armenia, My Home offers us such an emotional journey through the natural beauty, architecture, history, and heritage of Armenia.

In the film, we hear participants refer to visiting Armenia as a pilgrimage and a spiritual experience.

We hear about the need to have a connection to the Armenian homeland.

We hear how the ancient churches and buildings that have endured for thousands of years give us hope that if we have existed for all these years, we will continue to exist in the future.

This unique documentary is possible on PBS because of the support of individuals just like you.

Your contribution makes these programs come to life, and if you become a member of this PBS station by making a contribution right now, you'll receive access to an exclusive member benefit called PBS Passport.

With Passport, you can stream the entire 60-minute program.

The full program features breathtaking cinematography, historical images, and intimate views of daily life that come together for a spectacular visual journey in Armenia, My Home.

You can make your contribution and begin your Passport experience right now by scanning the QR code or going to the website on your screen to give.

Your contribution makes all the programs you enjoy on TV, online, and on the PBS app possible.

Thank you for your support of Armenia, My Home.