Documentarian bands with rockers to target genocide

Carla Garapedian recognizes the irony of her initial reaction to the music of System of a Down.

"To me it just sounded like they were screaming," she says of the multiplatinum band's heavy-duty rock.

But the former BBC anchor and documentary filmmaker is a fan of raised voices. Her new film "Screamers," which opens Friday, is about just that, people speaking up.

Having tackled tough issues in award-winning films such as "Beneath the Veil," which profiled women in Afghanistan, and "Iran Undercover," about that country's student movement, Garapedian found common ground with the politically outspoken members of System of a Down. In fact, the quartet and the filmmaker, all Armenian-Americans from Los Angeles, had been screaming about the same issue for several years: getting the United States and world governments to officially recognize the Armenian genocide of 1915. Beyond that first listen, Garapedian realized that the band would be the perfect vehicle to drive this long-gestating project.

For "Screamers," Garapedian followed System of a Down on its 2005 European and US concert tours as the band played music and spread its message. The musicians also visited with survivors, including lead singer Serj Tankian's grandfather, and lobbied then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert to allow a vote on a resolution that calls for the US government to recognize the atrocities committed in 1915. (The Turkish government attributes the deaths to famine, disease, and internecine fighting during World War I.)

Beyond that, the band members' and Garapedian's common goal with the film is to shine a light on the more recent and current genocides occurring around the globe in places such as Rwanda and Darfur. Garapedian interviewed authors, politicians , and historians, including Henry Morgenthau III, whose grandfather was US ambassador to Turkey at the time and bore witness to the massacres, and Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard professor Samantha Power , who authored the 2002 book "A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide."

Garapedian stopped by the Globe offices recently to discuss the film. Power will also host a screening at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government tomorrow night at 6:30. The director, Power , and others will participate in a panel discussion afterward.

Q So you discovered that you grew up in the same area of Los Angeles as the band members but didn't know them?

A Yes, in fact my mother taught in the public school a block away from where [three of the band members] went to school. In a way , that's why it was easy to work with them even though the rock world is so alien to me with the groupies, the entourage, and the politics of how things are. But because they were Armenians they treated me like a relative : "Carla's a nice Armenian girl and we're nice Armenian boys. We want to look after her." That made it a pleasant experience.

Q How did you become familiar enough with the band to know you wanted to use them for the film? And are you a fan of the music now?

A Yes. [System of a Down has ] held three concerts on Armenian Commemoration Day in Los Angeles. The first one was in 2003, I went to one in 2004 , and then I filmed the one in 2005. They encourage human-rights organizations to set up tables outside the concert area. I was sitting at a table called the Armenian Film Foundation with my little pamphlets not really knowing the music at all , and what impressed me was the fans coming up to the table, kids who were like 15, 16, 17 years old and a lot of them already knew about the Armenian genocide and other genocides because the band's message is to recognize all genocide and that they are all linked.

These fans had been politicized and I didn't know if they were fans who were naturally political who were attracted to the band or whether it was the other way around, but I was really shocked. And they represented every social group, ethnic group in Los Angeles. I thought, "My God, they're reaching out to a generation of young people. Maybe that's something I can work with." Because how do you tell the story of genocide in the last century that will reach out to people and not turn them off?

And meeting the band and Serj Tankian made me realize that he was very much about educating people. And he said, "If you make a film about the denial of all genocides, then count me in. If you make it just about the history of the Armenian genocide , that's not enough for me because it's about the denial of all genocide." So we were very much on the same page and that's what began it.

Q There are some very disturbing images in the film of everything from the corpses of children in the Holocaust to video of attacks in Rwanda.

A It's upsetting when you're seeing it but I was looking for that. It's to access our outrage. We say "never again" but we have allowed genocides to happen consistently since the Holocaust. And the Armenian genocide happened before the Holocaust. I thought it was very important to show children in each of the genocides because that's really what genocide's about, it's about killing everybody or going after everybody.

Q What do you hope people do when they see the film?

A What I would like to have happen is that people who see the film, at the very least, access their emotions and their outrage. And at the other side of it feel that they can actually do something to stop genocide.

On Jan. 19, two weeks after our initial interview, Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, who is featured in "Screamers," was shot to death outside the offices of the Agos newspaper in Istanbul. Dink was editor of the bilingual newspaper and after writing about the genocide of the Ottoman Armenians had been charged under Turkish penal code 301 for "insulting Turkish identity." We called to follow up with Garapedian, who last saw Dink at the "Screamers" premiere in LA this past November.

Q How disturbing is this, not just on a personal level, but on a symbolic level?

A I think because the film is called "Screamers," the obvious parallel is to say Hrant Dink was a screamer and look what happened to him. Unfortunately we have to do what we have to do. We make choices in our lives. He said to me, "If I go to prison I'll struggle in prison. If I'm out of prison, I'll continue the struggle. This is who I am and this is what I'm going to do." And I think that goes for all of us.

The band is going to do its music and I'm going to continue the national release of this film. People of good conscience just have to keep doing what they're doing and keep screaming, because we do have a genocide going on now [in Darfur]. It's not just this little crisis going on in a little place somewhere in Africa that nobody cares about. It is actually a genocide going on now, so we have to scream, it's our responsibility to scream.