Jacques Kebadian

Jacques Kebadian was born in France in 1940, to Armenian parents who emigrated in the 1920s. In 1964, he graduated from IDHEC. From 1965 to 1969, he was Robert Bresson’s assistant for the films Au hasard Balthazar, Histoire de Mouchette, and Une femme douce. After his first feature film (Trotsky in 1967) he turned to documentary cinema. From the 1980s, after the death of his father, Jacques Kebadian felt the need to return to his origins, to meet the mythical country that his father told him about. In 1981, he made Armenia 1900, which he dedicated to his father. In 1982, he was one of the founders of AAA (Association Audiovisuelle Arménienne) whose objectives are to broadcast films by filmmakers from Armenia and the diaspora. Afterwards, several essential films relating to Armenia and its history were released, such as Sans retour possible (1983), and Que sont mes camarades devenus (1984). Les cinq sœurs in 1985, Mémoire arménienne in 1993, and finally, Vingt ans après, in 2002 completes this return to roots. Kebadian is interested in the history of peoples – uprooted, exiled, namely the history of Armenians and their diaspora, but also that of the dancers of the Royal Ballet in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge genocide (Apsaras (1986) or of African families without papers (D’une brousse à l’autre), and much more.