Dear friends,
Please join us on Monday, April 6 at 7:00 PM for a screening of You’re Not Listening to Me! (15 min), a poetic meditation on language, memory, and intergenerational connection. The film brings together three generations of Armenian women from Malatya around a dinner table in Istanbul, tracing how Western Armenian lives, shifts, and sometimes fades across time. Yaya, whose Western Armenian is retreating into silence; her daughter Janette, who understands but cannot fully speak her mother’s tongue; and her granddaughters, Lidya, an Istanbul-based Rebetiko musician, and Seroş, a queer migrant to Berlin.
Guided by filmmaker Nelly Achkhen, the film explores an intimate and unexpected encounter between Western Armenian and Turkish. What begins as a tension reveals itself as something more complex: Turkish becomes not a barrier, but a thread that gives texture and resonance to a language shaped by layered histories. Through this lens, the film asks a subtle yet powerful question-what does it mean to preserve a language, and what might be lost when it is separated from the worlds that once sustained it?
The film’s director Nelly Ashkhen and the film’s protagonist Lydia will also be present at the discussion. After the film, Istanbul based musician Lydia will talk about the initiative Women of Rebetiko.
The discussion will be in Armenian.
Film duration: 15 minutes, languages: Armenian and Turkish, with English subtitles
The presentation about the “Women of Rebetiko” initiative will be in Armenian, duration: 30 minutes.