SYSTEM OF A DOWN HELPS DOCUMENT 1915 ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IN "SCREAMERS," OPENING DEC. 8

Starpulse.com, CT
Dec 6 2006

Imagine if your life, your very being, was threatened each day simply
because of the color of your hair, your skin or where you lived. Yet
genocide, the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national,
racial or cultural group goes on outside our very windows every day.

It would seem unfathomable that such mass murder could happen in the
21st century, yet far too many still get away with it.

The evils and ugliness of genocide have long been reported in the
world press to great indifference. The message is significant but its
communication is stodgy. Today’s world demands relevance, attention
to detail and delivered in a way that is both understandable and
connected. Nowadays, music delivers the message.

The vastly popular, hugely influential, 16 million selling, Grammy
Award winning band System Of A Down have lent their voice, music, and
support to a ground-breaking new film called "Screamers." Directed
by the award-winning humanitarian filmmaker Carla Garapedian,
"Screamers" is an internationally produced documentary that covers
the history of modern-day genocide and genocide denial, beginning
with the Armenian Genocide in 1915, and how the world’s inactions
lead to other massacres. "Screamers", which recently won the Audience
Award at the AFI Film Festival, is distributed by Maya Releasing and
opens in Los Angeles and Orange County on December 8th at the Mann
Marketplace in Glendale, the Mann Chinese 6 in Hollywood, the Mann
Criterion in Santa Monica and AMC’s The Block in Orange.

System Of A Down have always worked to spread the message about
official Armenian Genocide Recognition within the U.S. and other
countries where they have yet to formally acknowledge that it took
place. (Most incredibly, a lot of the band’s fans in their teens and
twenties have learned about genocide not through school or the media
but directly through the band’s music, actions and statements.) The
band felt compelled to work with this unique project that hauntingly
illustrates how the denial of those crimes lead to more genocides of
the 20th Century – from the Holocaust to Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda…and
all the way to present-day Darfur.

In the film, there are personal stories of genocide survivors,
policy critics and whistleblowers – the "screamers" as they have
become known. When it comes to genocide, America’s interest has
always been to stay neutral, no matter how wide-scale the carnage,
with successive Presidents conspiring to turn a blind eye to genocides
as they are happening. After the Holocaust, we may say ‘never again’
— but we don’t mean it.

Using SOAD’s music as the backdrop to historical footage and current
accounts from genocide survivors – including lead singer Serj Tankian’s
grandfather, one of the few remaining eyewitnesses of the genocide in
Turkey, "Screamers" presents some of the great questions of our time:
Can we stop genocide? Do we really mean ‘never again’?

And how can we take action to prevent atrocities of this magnitude
from happening in the future?

"Screamers" is directed by Carla Garapedian, conceived by Peter
McAlevey and Carla Garapedian and produced by Nick de Grunwald,
Tim Swain, Carla Garapedian and Peter McAlevey. The film features
System Of A Down vocalist Serj Tankian, guitarist Daron Malakian,
bassist Shavo Odadjian and drummer John Dolmayan.

Interesting highlights of "Screamers":

*It’s a documentary about genocide.

*Though the emphasis is on the Armenian genocide, the same thing is
going on now in Darfur.

* It features the uber popular System Of A Down.

* The band members are all of Armenian descent.

*A lot of their music and concert footage appear in the film.

* Heretofore ignorant, a lot of their fans in their teens and twenties
have learned about genocide directly through the band’s music and
statements.

* Movie features newly named Nobel Prize winner for literature
Orhan Pamuk.

* France sought to calm an uproar in Turkey and the EU after its
Parliament voted that’s it’s a crime for anyone to deny the massacres
of Armenians in Turkey were anything but genocide.

* Filmmaker Carla Garapedian was a high profile journalist. She was
the first American to anchor the BBC News.

6/12/05/system_of_a_down_helps_document_1915_arm_8

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress