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The general purpose of the Atlantis Foundation is to create educational and cultural films on ethnic minorities, particularly people of India, the People of West Africa, and Native Canadians- all former subjects of the British Commonwealth of Nations- in order to promote and create understanding and appreciation of these cultures.
The Foundation's ultimate goal is to undertake a long-term sociological study and film documentation of village or tribal cultures, most notably in three diverse parts of the world- in the Bengal province of India, Nigeria, and Canada.
The attempt will be to document life and a generational change over a sixty year period. The first will be a village in Bengal. The filming of a particular family in Hindu India was started in 1950 by Dr. J. Michael Hagopian, a former professor at the Benaras Hindu University in India. In 1978 he returned to India to film the new generation and to document the changes within the same family, and he is returning again to film the changes within this family.
If the India project proves successful, the Foundation plans to complete films already started by Dr. Hagopian in Nigeria in 1960 and Alberta, Canada in 1972, thus extending into the mid-21st century a compartive view of village life in three diverse cultures on three continents.
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