Archive for November 2008

An Idea for an Assyrian Movie

I was recently given a book (in Arabic) titled “The History of the Kings” written by Malek Khoshaba.It details the events and stories of Assyrian tribes and kings from about the late 1700s to the mid 1900s. It is just fascinating. It helps you explore how our Assyrians got to where they are today. It also helps explains the relations we have with the Kurds. After being so amazed by the heroic and historical stories in this book, I thought this would make a great Assyrian movie. Really, doesn’t get any better than this. We can hire a few Assyrians from Syria or Iraq, with some heavy Assyrian accents and shoot it in the mountains. We don’t need any big budget for this. It can be done with a few thousand dollars. But it will be a huge hit with Assyrians. Assyrians are used to watching such tribal affairs movies and series in Arabic, so I am sure they would relate to this.

The movie directors can design it so that the actors/characters wear traditional old Assyrian clothes. And just make the whole setting as if it is in the 1800s. We can also make them grow beard, long hair, and make the females hold their hair in braids. I can see this being as a great success, very easily. And big profits for the producers. In fact, this can even be done in the US, in an area with some mountains and rivers (anything that looks like Hakkari, Tyari, Ashetha etc.) The historical material is available. We have many  Assyrian scholars with knowledge on recent Assyrian history who can help.

If you think about it, this will be a big hit movie with all Assyrians, regardless of tribe, church, affiliation etc. It will also help our young generation to better understand our history, and what we have been through, how we got here, and how we can learn from the past.
Nations and culture use media to inspire their people and enrich their feeling of nationalism. Why don’t we do the same? and like I said, this will be a low budget movie, but the returns will be great.

I can already think of some names for the movie:

“Malek Khoshaba”
“Malket d’Atouraye”
“Atouraye d’1800”

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