Screamers

October 10, 2015
Screened as part of the “Singing in the Lion’s Mouth: Music as Resistance to Genocide” conference

The Holocaust, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur … and every time a U.S. President, a British Prime Minister, a U.N. Secretary General says, “Never again.” Yet it happens – again, and again and again…

Multi-platinum, Grammy-award winning rock band System of a Down’s critically acclaimed political tour movie is an impassioned synthesis of concert film and political expose about the rock group’s intensely personal campaign to stop genocide.

Chronicling the band’s efforts to persuade both the British and U.S. governments to recognize the Armenian genocide, Screamers also traces the history of modern-day genocide – and genocide denial – from the first occurrence in the 20th century in Turkey, to today in Darfur. Commentary and interviews with Pulitzer prize-winning author Samantha Power (A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide), survivors from Turkey, Rwanda and Darfur, FBI whistleblowers, and the recently assassinated Hrant Dink, who was murdered in Turkey after appearing in this film, shed light on why genocides repeat.

Passive politicians 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.