THOUSAND OAKS : Panel Won’t Oppose State on Film Ruling

A state commission will not overturn the state Department of Education’s refusal to distribute a Thousand Oaks man’s film on the Armenian massacre to public schools.

The state Curriculum Commission agreed last week, however, to allow J. Michael Hagopian to try to sell on his own the 25-minute videotape to junior and senior high schools for use in history and social studies classes.

The decision ends a dispute over whether the education department should distribute the film statewide. The department last year paid Hagopian $50,000 to make the video but expressed concern over alleged interference from the Legislature and about the quality of the film.

“I was in the middle of a struggle between the Legislature and the state Department of Education, and I got the raw end of the deal,” said Hagopian, who was born in Turkish Armenia in 1913 and has been nominated twice for Emmy awards for his earlier films on the subject.

“The Armenian Genocide”--which includes interviews with survivors and grisly black-and-white photos of dead children--tells the story of the massacre of perhaps as many as 1.5 million Armenians from 1915 to 1923 in what was then the Ottoman Empire.

Turkish officials reject the accusations that more than 1 million Armenians were slaughtered, saying that perhaps 300,000 died during mass deportations. They argue that both Turks and Armenians were victims of a civil war, famine and epidemic that plagued the country in that period.

A state law passed in 1987 required the Department of Education to produce a film on the topic.

Department spokeswoman Susie Lange said the department opposed the mandate, just as it would any effort by the Legislature to require certain texts or other instructional material. She also said department officials had concerns that insufficient historical context was provided.

The commission reached a compromise between Turkish-Americans, who had sought an outright rejection of the film, and the Armenian community, which wanted the commission to adopt the video and distribute it, Lange said.

Lange said the department received about 900 letters, mostly from the Turkish and Armenian communities, on the issue.