amNewYork, New York
Jan 27 2007
‘Screamers’ remembers genocide
By Jay Carr
January 26, 2007
Before there was Hitler’s Holocaust, there was Turkey’s, where 1.5
million Armenians were exterminated between 1915 and 1923. Who, asked
Hitler on the eve of his genocide, remembers the Armenians?
"Screamers," Carla Garapedian’s documentary driven by the abrasive
metal uproar of the band System of a Down, does. And she wants us to,
as well. When she and the band, comprised of descendants of Armenian
genocide victims, aren’t busy taking Turkey to task, they raise other
inconvenient questions, lapped up by young audiences receptive to
anti-establishment edge.
If the Armenian genocide had been protested, or even questioned, one
band member asks, who’s to say that Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur
and the Holocaust might not have been mitigated? As even Turkish
writers (Orhan Pamuk, Taner Ackam) boldly question the long silence,
the band’s outcry keeps the pressure on countries (including the
U.S.) to put geopolitcal expediency aside and lean on Turkey, where
the issue is met with denial and repression. As the concert footage
bumps heads with the archival footage, "Screamers" keeps the issue
alive like a hot coal.
SCREAMERS. Documentary by Carla Garapedian
eamers,0,6861007.story?coll=am-entertainment-utili ty
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
