PARIS. – Two short movies with a plot on historic catastrophe are presented in Arpa international film festival this year, Asbarez reports.

The Piano by Levon Minasyan tells about musical motivations and struggles of a child-virtuoso Lusine, who is an orphan after the earthquake in Gyumri, Armenia in 1988. While Polis by Eric Nazaryan tells about the journey of an Armenian oud player Armenak, who visits Istanbul to participate in an oud festival and find the place of his grandfather’s oud shop that existed before the Armenian Genocide in Turkey in 1915. The two movies speak on trauma and humanizing and therapeutic power of music and comedy when faced by death and destruction.  However, the narration of each movie is quite different from each other. The Piano subtly touches the theme of the earthquake with brief references and allusions, whereas Polis openly tells the consequences of the Genocide for the family of Armenak.