WATERTOWN — On Monday, May 7, St. James Armenian Church’S Men’s Club will host a dinner meeting at the church’s Mosesian Cultural and Youth Center. The speaker will be Carla Garapedian, international film producer, director, actress, writer, broadcaster, and supporter of genocide education.
Based in Los Angeles and London, Garapedian is the director of “Screamers,” a film that has been translated into 14 languages and continues to be used around the world to raise Genocide awareness in schools and colleges. She is also Associate Producer of “The Promise” and Consulting Producer for “Intent to Destroy.”
She earned her undergraduate and PhD degrees at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is the only American to anchor BBC World News. She has made documentaries for the BBC on Afghanistan, Chechnya, North Korea, and Iran. She has investigated dangerous nuclear reactors in Eastern Europe and military coups in Africa. The Los Angeles Times described her work with the headline “Documenting Truth in Dangerous Places.” She has been featured in the Washington Post, Boston Globe and publications around the world.
In 2009, Garapedian founded the Pomegranate Foundation, which promotes genocide education through the arts. It houses the Rwanda Library, a rare collection of Rwandan genocide survivor interviews and will soon include an archive of testimonies from Syrian Armenian refugees.
Since 2011 she has led the Armenian Film Foundation’s project to digitize a rare collection of 400 Armenian genocide survivor interviews filmed in 16mm over four decades by the late filmmaker Dr. J. Michael Hagopian. This archive is now part of Steven Spielberg’s Visual History Archive at the USC Shoah Foundation.
Carla is currently working on an international film production of her new crime drama, “Nemesis,” about the murder of Talaat Pasha in Berlin and the trial of Soghomon Tehlirian.
