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Montreal Gazette, Canada
March 23 2007
This festival will leave you completely sober
on Human Rights Film Festival
BILL BROWNSTEIN, The Gazette
Published: Friday, March 23, 2007
The Montreal Human Rights Film Festival is unlike any other in the
city - which is really saying something in light of the plethora of
film fests in this city.
Beginning tonight and running until Thursday at the Cinema du Parc,
the second edition of this festival, like the first, is almost
entirely devoid of glitz and glamour. That's because there's nothing
remotely sexy about the fest's 115 films, which touch on everything
from homelessness and hunger to children's rights and health care,
from racism and intolerance to war and genocide. Essentially, this
festival's focus is on jolting and sensitizing viewers to some of the
inequities of life on Earth.
Fittingly, the fest kicks off with a bang - thematically and
sonically - tonight with the Quebec premiere of Screamers. This
stirring documentary chronicles the efforts of the heavy-metal,
Grammy Award-winning band System of a Down, while on international
tour, to raise awareness of the Armenian genocide of 1915 in Turkey
among those still in a state of denial. And, sadly, there are many in
that state.
The mission is intensely personal for the boys in the band: they are
of Armenian ancestry and they all lost too many family members in the
genocide.
But what the band members just can't comprehend is why, among others,
U.S. and British political leaders, unlike those in Canada, find it
so difficult to simply recognize a well-documented genocide that took
the lives of 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey. The Armenian people
were nearly annihilated. But the musicians, like many others, soon
come to the realization that partisan politics so often trumps common
sense.
Band members interview aged relatives who somehow survived the
massacres. The commentary is particularly chilling as they recall
watching family members, including small children and their own
parents, slaughtered for no other reason than their people were
perceived as a threat to the Turks.
One witness recounts a conversation between a family member and a
Turkish official who had come to take him away. The Armenian asked
what his destination was. The candid response: "Nothingness."
The boys also come to the stark realization that if the perpetrators
of this genocide over 90 years ago had been made accountable for
their crimes against humanity, perhaps future genocides could have
been avoided. They make mention of this ominous quote: "After all,
who remembers today the extermination of the Armenians?"
The speaker is Adolf Hitler. The line was uttered in 1939. The
reference was likely to the coming Holocaust of 6 million Jews as
well as scores more people whom Hitler didn't see as fitting into his
lunatic idea of Utopia.
Along with Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Samantha Power and others,
the band members also probe similar mass ethnic cleansings and the
resulting death tolls over the last few decades around an often
indifferent world. They estimate 2 million died as a consequence of
genocide in Cambodia; 200,000 in Bosnia; 800,000 in Rwanda; 400,000,
and counting, in Darfur.
Staggering stats. Consensus is that "we should all be screaming."
Hence, the title of this doc.
The second Montreal Human Rights Film Festival begins tonight and
runs until Thursday at the Cinema du Parc, 3575 Park Ave. Screamers
is presented tonight at 8 p.m. and tomorrow at 8:30 p.m. Tickets for
all screenings are $5 and are available at the Cinema du Parc box
office or at www.cinemaduparc.com. For more information, call
514-842-7127 or go to www.ffdpm.com.
March 23 2007
This festival will leave you completely sober
on Human Rights Film Festival
BILL BROWNSTEIN, The Gazette
Published: Friday, March 23, 2007
The Montreal Human Rights Film Festival is unlike any other in the
city - which is really saying something in light of the plethora of
film fests in this city.
Beginning tonight and running until Thursday at the Cinema du Parc,
the second edition of this festival, like the first, is almost
entirely devoid of glitz and glamour. That's because there's nothing
remotely sexy about the fest's 115 films, which touch on everything
from homelessness and hunger to children's rights and health care,
from racism and intolerance to war and genocide. Essentially, this
festival's focus is on jolting and sensitizing viewers to some of the
inequities of life on Earth.
Fittingly, the fest kicks off with a bang - thematically and
sonically - tonight with the Quebec premiere of Screamers. This
stirring documentary chronicles the efforts of the heavy-metal,
Grammy Award-winning band System of a Down, while on international
tour, to raise awareness of the Armenian genocide of 1915 in Turkey
among those still in a state of denial. And, sadly, there are many in
that state.
The mission is intensely personal for the boys in the band: they are
of Armenian ancestry and they all lost too many family members in the
genocide.
But what the band members just can't comprehend is why, among others,
U.S. and British political leaders, unlike those in Canada, find it
so difficult to simply recognize a well-documented genocide that took
the lives of 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey. The Armenian people
were nearly annihilated. But the musicians, like many others, soon
come to the realization that partisan politics so often trumps common
sense.
Band members interview aged relatives who somehow survived the
massacres. The commentary is particularly chilling as they recall
watching family members, including small children and their own
parents, slaughtered for no other reason than their people were
perceived as a threat to the Turks.
One witness recounts a conversation between a family member and a
Turkish official who had come to take him away. The Armenian asked
what his destination was. The candid response: "Nothingness."
The boys also come to the stark realization that if the perpetrators
of this genocide over 90 years ago had been made accountable for
their crimes against humanity, perhaps future genocides could have
been avoided. They make mention of this ominous quote: "After all,
who remembers today the extermination of the Armenians?"
The speaker is Adolf Hitler. The line was uttered in 1939. The
reference was likely to the coming Holocaust of 6 million Jews as
well as scores more people whom Hitler didn't see as fitting into his
lunatic idea of Utopia.
Along with Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Samantha Power and others,
the band members also probe similar mass ethnic cleansings and the
resulting death tolls over the last few decades around an often
indifferent world. They estimate 2 million died as a consequence of
genocide in Cambodia; 200,000 in Bosnia; 800,000 in Rwanda; 400,000,
and counting, in Darfur.
Staggering stats. Consensus is that "we should all be screaming."
Hence, the title of this doc.
The second Montreal Human Rights Film Festival begins tonight and
runs until Thursday at the Cinema du Parc, 3575 Park Ave. Screamers
is presented tonight at 8 p.m. and tomorrow at 8:30 p.m. Tickets for
all screenings are $5 and are available at the Cinema du Parc box
office or at www.cinemaduparc.com. For more information, call
514-842-7127 or go to www.ffdpm.com.