12:02 PM 1/26/2007 -0500, SCREAMERS private screening & review 
To: **************
From: "Guy S." ************
Subject: SCREAMERS private screening & review 
Cc: 

Please forward to your friends: 

I attended a private screening of a movie called SCREAMERS at a private club called the Core Club in NYC on Thursday, Jan 25, 2007. SCREAMERS opened its NYC engagement on Friday, Jan 26. It's also showing in Chicago, Worcester, and Boston in some areas openning on Feb 9. There may be other local screenins at some point in the future. 

SCREAMERS, a documentary, is best described as a "Rockumentary" about a band called SYSTEM of a DOWN and the film also carries a parallel theme of bringing awareness of the systematic denial of Genocide by governments around the world. 

I am in the movie as I was interviewed for my role in getting Vice President Cheney's office to write a letter referencing the Armenian Genocide to Maritza Ohanesian, a 100 year old Armenian Genocide survivor. This act by the VP reached the national press as it represented the first acknowledgement of the 1915 Armenian Genocide by the executive branch of the US government. Cheney ultimately backpedals when pressed on the issue saying that the administrations policy towards the issue has not changed. Ms. Ohanesian is articulate and convincing in her description of the events of 1915, and asks on camera if the VP had changed his mind. 

Most impressive is SYSTEM of a DOWN band leader Serj Tankian who leads his band across popular venues across Europe both entertaining his audience and pressing the same audience with regards to political awareness and condemnation of genocide ambivalence. 

Where Atom Agoyan's "Ararat" film presents the 1915 Armenian genocide as it was, director Carla Garapedian's film deals with the modern day issues of both political denial of the 1915 Armenian Genocide, and current inaction on the part of leading governments towards The Rwandan genocide and the ongoing Darfur genocide. 

Overshadowing the release of SCREAMERS is the murder of a Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink who was killed by a Turkish nationalist. Hrant Dink was one of several people convicted of Turkey's article 301 on a charge of "insulting Turkishness" specifically for speaking and writing about the Armenian genocide. 

The film and especially the Cheney genocide letter and subsequent backpedalling is a representation of how well principled men and women elected to public offices in the US, Britain, and elsewhere, when presented with the prospect of political survival and the acquisition of power respond at the expense of genocide survivors. 

Interspersed with the rapid paced interviews with experts and witnesses are on stage footage of SYSTEM of a DOWN. Their soundtrack mixes views of the band, their audience, and scenes of 
military aircraft from bases in Turkey, scenes of the carnage from Rwanda, Darfur and elsewhere. SYSTEM of a DOWN even plays a traditional Armenian folk song, Sardarabad, as a closing number to their Berlin concert. 

One rather telling segment starts with an almost comical scenario where a poster shows Arnold Schwarzenegger publically acknowledging the Armenians Genocide. The action moves to a Turkish citizen burning an old book whose cover has a young pumped up Arnold on it. Following this is visual footage of US presidents and spokepersons going back to the Reagan era tiptoeing around how they describe what happened to the Armenians, being careful not to use the "G" word. When the curent president reveals in public that a review of the facts shows that Genocide is occuring in Darfur, the commentary is tnat no actions to prevent the Darfur genocide are undertaken, and that the impression is that just the uttering of the revelation of Genocide by the administration is their idea of "doing something about it". 

Guy