Green Left Weekly
Feb 21 2010

Scream against the Armenian genocide

Review by Nathan Verney
19 February 2010

Screamers
Directed by Carla Garapedian,
featuring music by System of a Down
Via Vision Entertainment,
DVD95 minutes, $24.95

This film invites us all to be `screamers’.

A `screamer’ is someone with a full understanding of what genocide is
and so has no alternative but to scream to people all about it and
tell them how it can be stopped. The genocide pointed to is that of
Armenia in 1915, but the message is broader.

Unlike other historical documentaries, Screamers combines the usual
interviews with academics, historians and activists, and archival
footage with music from a live concert ` performed by Californian
alternative-metal band System of a Down, taken from their 2005 tour.

For the uninitiated, System of a Down are notable for their political
commitment. In 2003, they released a song called `Boom!’ with a video
featuring footage of that year’s worldwide anti-Iraq war
demonstrations.

They are also of Armenian heritage, are personally aware of the
genocide and are all active around the issue. They are not just the
soundtrack to the documentary but are a large part of it, having
grandparents who survived the genocide.

The Armenian genocide began on April 24, 1915, when the Turkish
Ottoman Empire began rounding up and murdering prominent Armenian
intellectuals and community leaders. They followed that up with the
forced displacement of the rest of the population, committing
horrendous acts in the process.

In the end, up to 1.5 million Armenians were massacred, their land
stolen and their culture ruined. The perpetrators were never held
responsible.

This genocide is believed to have inspired others. When ordering his
troops to slaughter Polish people in WWII, Adolf Hitler quipped: `Who,
after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’

The Armenian genocide is historically irrefutable; however the
documentary shows that the Turkish government not only refuses to
admit it but has made mention of it punishable as treason. Turkey is
not the only nation refusing to acknowledge these events as genocide ‘
in fact only 20 nations do, including Canada, France, Switzerland and
as of 2005, Venezuela.

The documentary shows protest rallies and lobbying attempts by the
band and others to get the US and Britain to recognise that genocide
took place. The reasons for the US and Britain’s refusal to recognise
the genocide are thoroughly explored.

One reason is alliance with Turkey. The Allied powers in World War I
issued a statement saying they would punish the perpetrators. After
the war, however, they did not follow through, because they wanted the
new republican Turkish state as an ally against the Bolshevik
revolution in Russia.

After World War II, Turkey became a NATO member and a key part of the
Cold War encirclement of the Soviet Union. Today, the reason for the
US and Britain not wanting to embarrass Turkey is that they rely on
Turkish military bases and airspace for continued occupation of Iraq.

Turkey is a large purchaser of US arms. The film exposes the intense
lobbying efforts by the US military-industrial complex to prevent the
passing of a bill in the US Congress that would have recognised the
Armenian genocide.

System of a Down lead singer Serj Tankian says: `It’s never profitable
to save the victims of a genocide. We have to switch priorities from
profit to people and until we do that, genocides will continue,
holocausts will continue, and we will be living that holocaust as a
planet, together.’

Unlike some other documentaries that rattle off facts, dates,
statistics and death tolls, what sets Screamers apart is its focus on
the human side of genocide. The real horror is seen in the intense but
vacant eyes of the surviving children captured in photographs as well
as the first-hand accounts of the band’s relatives and other
survivors.

In genocide, it is not only the dead who are victims, but the
survivors as well.

By also including similar images of and interviews with people who
survived genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia and Darfur, we see how
similar these events are in the scale of their absolute horror.

However, other genocides are conspicuously absent. It is perhaps
understandable that the lesser-known genocides (to a US audience) of
East Timor, West Papua and Aceh were omitted; nless so those of the
Tamils or the Palestinians.

On the musical front, System of a Down plays songs across the range of
their albums, with all manner of styles ‘ heavy, slow with Armenian
melodies and politically-charged. The weaving in of their live
performance with the rest of the documentary is not only fluid, but
the songs’ images and emotions add to those of the film.

For example, the heaviness and intensity of `BYOB’ ‘ with the rousing
line `Why don’t presidents fight the war? Why do they always send the
poor” is played at an intense point in the documentary. The haunting
and atmospheric `Holy Mountains’ provides the soundtrack to images of
ruined Armenian cultural buildings and of the horror experienced by
those killed.

As the band has been on hiatus since 2006, this documentary is also
something new for fans to enjoy ‘ even if the grim content of much of
this compelling documentary makes `enjoy’ not the best word.

Screamers is powerful, innovative and emotional. The first-hand
accounts of genocide are harrowing but necessary viewing. The
interactions between Tankian and his grandfather emphasise the
humanity of the survivors, even when the perpetrators have lost
theirs.

And melding post-punk heavy metal with historical documentary ‘ who
would have thought it could be done?