"Screamers"
is a documentary feature following the Grammy-award winning rock band ‘System of
a Down’ as they confront the issue of the Armenian genocide in Turkey in 1915
and efforts by the Turkish government to deny it.
Through the band’s personal
campaign to stop all genocides, Pulitzer prize-winner Samantha Power, survivors
and whistleblowers, the film traces the Armenian genocide’s links to the
Holocaust, Rwanda, Bosnia, the Iraqi Kurds and today’s genocide in Darfur. It
shows how successive Presidents and corporate interests have conspired to turn a
blind eye to genocides as they are happening. We say ‘never again’ but we don’t
mean it.
Directed by Carla Garapedian, Screamers is the first of several special
interest films the production company hopes to distribute in the United States
each year.
In Screamers, Garapedian traces the history of modern-day genocide - and
genocide denial - from the fertile “Holy Mountains” of Anatolia to the current
atrocities in Darfur. The documentary is as shattering as it is powerful, which
includes live performance footage and interviews with System Of A Down, the
multi-platinum, Grammy Award-winning rock band, all of whose members are of
Armenian descent. The film is laced with seven of the band’s songs from “Holy
Mountains” to “P.L.U.C.K.” to the #1 hit “B.Y.O.B.” that illuminate the band’s
views on political and social issues.
Screamers came together in the summer 2004 after producer McAlevey (“Radio
Flyer,” “Shadow Hours”) approached System Of A Down’s legendary producer Rick
Rubin about partnering with the band to make a documentary about one of their
main causes – recognition of the Armenian genocide.
With Rubin’s support, Garapedian met System Of A Down, who endorsed the film’s
important message -- how the world’s denial of the Turk’s Armenian genocide
contributed to the continuing crisis of international genocides ever since –
from Armenia to Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and present-day Darfur.
The cameras followed the band on their European and American tours last summer
and fall as they promoted their new, two-album set, “Mezmerize” and “Hypnotize.”
(Their collective record sales have totaled over 16 million albums worldwide.)
In the US, they attempted to track down House Speaker Dennis Hastert, visited a
100-year-old survivor and, most importantly, spent time with lead singer Serj
Tankian’s grandfather, one of the few remaining eyewitnesses of the genocide.
Finally, just this spring, seven months after staging a protest rally at Dennis
Hastert’s offices in Illinois (dubbed “Dennis, Do the Right Thing”), Tankian and
drummer John Dolmayan confronted Hastert in the Capital Rotunda … luckily, the
cameras were there.
With an ending filmed in the actual village in Turkey where the massacre of
Tankian’s ancestors began, set against the ghostly strains of the hit “Holy
Mountains,” the film comes full circle from 1915 through the horrors of 20th and
21st Century genocide in Darfur … to a finale of ghostly images of real
ancestors that will never be forgotten.
Excerpts of Screamers were shown in Congress in April of this year. The World
Premiere of the film will occur at the upcoming AFI Film Festival.
Screamers is produced by Nick de Grunwald, Tim Swain, Carla Garapedian and Peter
McAlevey, Screamers is set for a limited release in Los Angeles, CA on
December 8th,
Stay Tuned for more details soon.
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