Voicing their outrage

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By Chris Richards

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Anyone familiar with Serj Tankian's larynx knows the System of a Down singer can rock-and-roar with the best of them. He's a screamer.

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Carla Garapedian is a screamer, too, but she doesn't front a nu-metal band.

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She's a former BBC World anchor and the director of “Screamers,” a new documentary about System of a Down's efforts to promote genocide awareness. A “screamer” is someone who can “actually process what a genocide is without defense, without guile,” Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power says at the beginning of the film. “And when you do that . . . there's no other alternative but to go up to people and to scream.”

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The film's release comes at a time when celebrities such as George Clooney, Don Cheadle and the activist-hydra known as Brangelina are preaching genocide awareness. But where Hollywood types aim to save the world by putting their pretty faces before the cameras, System of a Down confronts the issue with some of the most abrasive rock ever to hit the airwaves.

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After a decade together, they've sold more than 16 million albums that favor throat-shredding vocals, schizophrenic guitar riffs and general rhythmic anarchy. Their activism is much more focused: Their concerts play host to grass-roots political organizations including Axis of Justice, a nonprofit that Tankian founded with former Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello.

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Garapedian, in Washington to promote the film's opening Friday, concurs with the band's approach. “We've all got to stand up and scream and tell our politicians we've got to do something about this now.”

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“It was important for my grandfather and to all those that survived the Armenian genocide to be remembered correctly,” Tankian, 39, says of his band's activism in an e-mail from his vacation in New Zealand. “I didn't want their sacrifice to be further victimized by geo-political expediency.”

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Like the band members, Garapedian, 45, is an Armenian American raised in Los Angeles. She attended the London School of Economics and Political Science, pursued a career in journalism with stops at the BBC and NBC, and directed documentaries, including her 2002 film about women in Afghanistan, “Lifting the Veil.”

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And while her work has always gravitated toward social injustice, “Screamers” hits much closer to home. “I never thought, though, that I would make a film like this,” she says. “It seemed to me like it was too personal. And as a journalist, one tries to be objective in the best sense of the word.”

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Garapedian hopes the band's abrasive touch will prick viewers' ears. “We've lost our connection to the debate about genocide, and that music brings out the emotion and allows you to access it,” says the director, who speaks with the eloquence of a television anchor and the passion of a campus activist.

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She first approached the band in 2004, and followed them on tour last summer.

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“They didn't want it to be a concert documentary film. They wanted the film I envisaged, which was a music-politics film where we use the energy and passion of the music to tell the story of genocide in the last century.”

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The result is seriocomic. System of a Down bassist Shavo Odadjian is playing tour bus pranks one minute and talking about the extermination of his bloodline the next.

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“I did that purposefully because that's who they are,” Garapedian says of the scene. “For me, it's important to show humor and joy because we are celebrating the fact that we've survived.”

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Ironically, there was one thing about the band Garapedian couldn't abide: their screaming.

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“I grew up with the Beatles and Elton John,” she explains. “I thought, 'Oh my God, what am I going to do?' I have this mega-popular rock band and they're all grandchildren of survivors, just like me. I have a way to tell the story . . .? and now I'm listening to the music and I can't listen to it.”

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But after recognizing the political bent of some of the band's lyrics, Garapedian realized that she had found the perfect score for her film.

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“How could I use Coldplay or something that was easier on the ear when you're talking about genocide? You need the rage and the anger.”

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Much like the band's music, the film makes some manic jumps — heartbreaking testimony from Tankian's grandfather cuts to blaring concert footage, to carnage in Rwanda, to a House International Relations Committee debate in Congress.

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In one scene, Tankian and System of a Down drummer John Dolmayan confront then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert in the Capitol's rotunda regarding a bill that would force the United States to recognize the Armenian genocide. (The bill may come to the House in the coming weeks, and while current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office says she endorses the bill, there's no word on whether she'll introduce it.)

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“Of course I was nervous,” Tankian recalls in the e-mail. “Here was the 3rd most powerful person in the country who can call the shots about my government officially recognizing this historical tragedy once and for all. . . In my heart I knew Dennis wouldn't do the right thing, but I wanted to inspire him to do so anyway. I may have failed, but hope that the story will inspire Nancy Pelosi, or other leaders in Congress not to take the same route.”

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