Dr. Laurence BROERS: “There won’t be an Armenian-Azerbaijani Dayton*”
27.05.2020 (Caucasian Journal) Caucasian Journal talks with Dr. Laurence BROERS, well-known expert on conflicts in the South Caucasus with over 20 years’ experience, both as a researcher and a practitioner of peace-building initiatives in the region.
Dr. Broers is the Caucasus programme director at London-based NGO Conciliation Resources. He is Associate Fellow at Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), author or editor of several books including Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry, and co-editor-in-chief of Caucasus Survey.
Alexander KAFFKA, editor-in-chief of Caucasian Journal: Dear Dr. Broers, welcome to Caucasian Journal. We’ve wanted to talk with you since a long while, and today we have this lucky possibility thanks to an important development — the release of a new documentary about the Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan (to watch video, scroll down to page bottom). You have agreed to introduce this film for our readers. Allow my first question — how do you visualize the target viewers group of the documentary?
Laurence BROERS: On 12 May we released online a documentary film called Parts of a Circle: History of the Karabakh Conflict. The film chronicles the disputed history of more than 30 years of this conflict, in an Armenian-Azerbaijani co-production. It is a locally led project, in which the scripts were written, interviewees selected and films produced by local teams of Armenian and Azerbaijani journalists. The project actually began in 2011 but for a number of reasons it has taken until now to be ready for the public release. The film we have recently released is actually a shorter version, at 76 minutes, of a longer 3-hour trilogy. The short film is in English, and it is intended for an international audience that is not necessarily familiar with the Karabakh conflict. The longer trilogy has considerably more detail and is intended more for a local and a specialist audience.
