Ravished Armenia (film)

Ravished Armenia
Promotional poster for the film
Directed by	Oscar Apfel
Produced by	William Nicholas Selig
Written by	Harvey Gates Aurora Mardiganian Nora Waln
Starring	Aurora Mardiganian Irvin Cummings Anna Q. Nilsson Henry Morgenthau Lillian West
Distributed by	First National Pictures
Release date	January 19, 1919 (1919-01-19)
Country	United States
Language	Silent (English subtitles)

Ravished Armenia, also known as Auction of Souls, is a 1919 American film based on the autobiographical book Ravished Armenia by Arshaluys (Aurora) Mardiganian, who also played the lead role in the film. The film, which depicts the 1915 Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire from the point of view of Armenian survivor Mardiganian, who plays herself in the film, survives in an incomplete form.

According to a contemporary New York Times article, the first half of the film shows "Armenia as it was before Turkish and German devastation, and led up to the deportation of priests and thousands of families into the desert. One of the concluding scenes showed young Armenian women flogged for their refusal to enter Turkish harems and depicted the Turkish slave markets." The story was adapted for the screen by Henry Leyford Gates, who also wrote the book.

The Selig production, which used several thousand Armenian residents of southern California as extras, was filmed in 1918-1919 near Newhall, California. During a scene in which Mardiganian was escaping from a harem by jumping from one roof to another she fell and broke her ankle. The production, however, continued with Mardiganian being carried to each set for her scenes.

The film shows young Armenian girls being "crucified" by being nailed to crosses. However, almost 70 years later Mardiganian revealed to film historian Anthony Slide that the scene was inaccurate and went on to describe what was actually an impalement. She stated that "The Turks didn't make their crosses like that. The Turks made little pointed crosses. They took the clothes off the girls. They made them bend down, and after raping them, they made them sit on the pointed wood, through the vagina. That's the way they killed – the Turks. Americans have made it a more civilized way. They can't show such terrible things."

H.L. Gates later ghostwrote a 20-part newspaper series for "Queen of the Artists' Studios" Audrey Munson in which he described the filming of the crucifixion scene in the California desert and said that one of the 12 artist's models employed for the scene died several days later from influenza as a result of the exposure during filming. He named the dead woman as Corinne Gray.