BAND’S ‘SCREAMS’ HELP RAISE AWARENESS
By Eileen Duffy
Tribune Staff Writer

South Bend Tribune, IN
March 1 2007

Carla Garapedian was raised on Elton John — not Black Sabbath.

So the prize-winning filmmaker and former BBC News anchor never
imagined she’d attend a nu metal band System of a Down’s concert,
let alone collaborate with the group on a documentary.

Like Garapedian, System of a Down’s members are all Armenian Americans
whose grandparents survived the Armenian genocide early in the
20th century. Also like Garapedian, System of a Down has enjoyed
international commercial success while confronting human rights
violations — specifically, genocide.

But when Garapedian found herself outside a benefit concert the band
headlined in April 2004, she knew none of this. She was simply sitting
at a booth, handing out pamphlets on the Armenian genocide to support
a group called the Armenian Film Foundation. But she soon found the
band’s fans consistently waved her information away, telling her that
System of a Down’s music had already taught them about the atrocity —
and other genocides as well.

"Here was a level of political awareness that I hadn’t seen in this
generation of young people before. I had an impression that people in
the 17-to-22 age frame were not particularly interested in genocide
and certainly not interested in talking about history," she says.

"But they were. This group was."

A few months later, Garapedian was sitting down with System of a
Down’s lead singer, Serj Tankian, to discuss a joint project.

The two chose to create a documentary focusing not just on the Armenian
genocide, but on the history of genocide denial.

Such was the birth of "Screamers," a documentary that uses System of a
Down’s concert tour to tell the story of genocide throughout the last
century. Told without narration, the film focuses partly on Tankian
and his grandfather — just a boy when he experienced deportation,
death marches and the loss of his brothers.

There is a delicate reverence owed to victims of genocide, as
Garapedian can testify from her experience in journalism. While
sitting in a van in Chechnya with another reporter and a photographer,
Garapedian was approached by a local woman, who invited the journalists
to see her sisters.

The woman led them to where the burnt torsos of her sisters were lying,
Garapedian remembers. One was still wearing her eyeglasses.

"As we stood there, my colleague, who is Catholic, crossed himself
immediately," she says. "When you’re (facing) a human being who is
dead, you have to give a quiet moment to that before you bear witness,
before you show the world what’s going on."

But the volume must soon be raised if genocide is to be stopped,
Garapedian adds.

"When Rwanda was going on, we weren’t walking around like, ‘OH MY GOD,
there’s a holocaust going on. We’ve got to stop it!’" she says.

"Through their fan base and their own personal experiences, (System
of a Down) tries to connect us to that outrage I think we should
be feeling."

That’s why Garapedian thinks System of a Down’s heavy, angry music
provides a good backdrop for a film about genocide. She admits that
at first, the music sounded like "screaming" to her — until she
started to pick up on the Armenian and other influences in the sound.

"I started to get an ear for it. I started to read the lyrics and
found even the screaming made sense," she recalls. "I started to
listen to it as a whole, and I got it."

A 60-year-old woman recently wrote to Garapedian after seeing the
film in Boston with her friends, Garapedian says.

" ‘We never thought we’d connect to this music in any way,’ she wrote,"
Garapedian says. " ‘But there’s something about the way this music
is woven into this film that actually makes sense.’

"Some critics have not approved of my choice to cut between rock
performances and genocide victims. But that’s an artistic choice
I’ve made," Garapedian continues. "To have this music about anger
and rage and passion — I see it as being very appropriate to the
subject matter."