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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the observable unknown, where science meets the unexplained. I'm Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscubboard.com and after two decades of working at the intersection of comparative religious studies, grief counseling, anthropology, quantum mechanics, and consciousness studies, I've discovered that our most profound human experiences often exist in the space between what we can prove and what we can perceive. In this podcast, we'll explore the measurable influences of immeasurable forces, those hidden factors that shape our reality but often escape our traditional scientific frameworks. From the latest research in consciousness studies to the ancient wisdom that's now finding validation in neuroscience and quantum physics, we're here to bridge the gap between academic rigor and spiritual insight. Whether you're a skeptic, a seeker, or simply curious about the deeper mechanics of human experience, you're in the right place. Together, we'll examine the evidence, check, challenge our assumptions, and explore what happens when we dare to look beyond the obvious. Today on the observable unknown, we welcome a woman whose life's work has bridged journalism, cinema and memory. From the anchor desk at BBC World News to the front lines of conflict, from digitizing the testimonies of Armenian and genocide survivors to directing films that confront the darkest truths of our history, Dr. Carla Garopedian head has carried voices the world tried to silence back into the light. Her new project, Nemesis 1921, revisits a Weimar era trial that shaped how we think about law, justice and accountability, offering not just history retold, but a mirror to our present moment. She is also the filmmaker behind Screamers, a landmark documentary interweaving the testimonies of survivors with the urgent voice of System of a Down. And she continues to lead the search for Auction of Souls, the first cinematic rendering of the Armenian genocide. Long thought lost, Carla is not only a filmmaker and journalist, she is a guardian of memory, a steward of stories that demand to be heard. It is an honor to welcome her today, so without any further ado, let's join the conversation. Foreign While we've spoken many times off mic as friends, today we step into a different space. A space where your story becomes part of the collective record. You've moved between worlds. From the anchor desk at BBC World News to the front lines of genocide testimony to filmmaking that wrestles with history's darkest shadows. And now, with Nemesis 1921, you. You're unearthing a trial that feels less like the past and more like a mirror to our present. I'd love to begin there. What does it mean to carry stories that refuse to stay buried and to bring them back into the light for all of us.
- [02:58]
B
It's such a good question because so much of what we do in filmmaking, in journalism, both are connected in intimate ways in is about bringing authenticity to the facts so that the audience or the people that we're telling the story to can identify with the story in some way. And I find myself being attracted to stories that speak to a global audience. Often it will be about one particular group, but it's really an allegory for everyone. So in this case, Armenians and their story about the. The Armenian genocide is the, is the B plot of the story. The A plot is the German people and what they're going through in the immediate post war period and the beginnings of Nazism, which we see really happening in the interwar period in the early twenties. And. And it feels like it's a long way away from what we're going through now. But there are so many things that are similar, so many parallels. And for me, I want to give the audience or the viewer the opportunity to make decisions about what he or she would do in that same situation so that they feel some form of agency when they view the movie or whatever it is, read the story. I think that's important in some way. And I can't always put my finger on that that's what I'm doing. But I know when I sit back and look at the meta picture of what I'm attracted to and what I'm doing, I know that that's very much a part of it. Once I was on the front line covering a story in Chechnya, and the reporter I was working with, he gave me a choice. He said, you know, you really don't have to come with us for this part of our journey, because as a woman, if you're caught in this case by the Russian army, bad things will happen to you. And he said, I really think you should think about whether you come with us. And I said, well, there's no way you're going to go into this danger zone without me. I mean, I'm one of the team and I happen to be the team leader. There was no way I was going to leave my two colleagues behind. I said, if you go, I go. And he said, I knew you would say that. I said, why? He said, because you're Armenian. And in that one moment, it was like somebody really shocked me by. You wouldn't think I'd be shocked because I am Armenian and Armenian American. But the fact he Said it in this, in this no man's land with a war going on. It seemed to have nothing to do with what I was doing. But he got to the core of my motivation and I asked him, well, why does that matter? He said, you couldn't help your people when the genocide happened, but maybe you can help these people now. So I think from that moment on, at least in my television career, from that moment on, I couldn't not see the connection, if you know what I mean. The fact that somebody had pointed it out that I in some ways was projecting my personal experience and to my work experience, maybe in a good way, but it, it helps to be aware of what you're doing. But it, it did make me more conscious of, of what I, what I. What I was motivated to do and what I was attracted to do.
- [06:39]
A
That's a wonderful story and I really appreciate that it strikes to the core of identity in many ways. You, standing at this crossroads of journalism, filmmaking and memory, looking at your journey from reporting the news to shaping how history itself is remembered, what has stayed constant at your.
- [06:57]
B
I've had the privilege to work with genocide survivor testimony, that is Armenian genocide survivors who've had their interviews recorded, some in the 70s, some in the 80s. So some of these interviews are quite old and I've been responsible for digitizing them for the visual history archive at the Shoah foundation at usc. And why that's relevant is when you sit with the survivor, not the actual person, but their story, their interview, and their looking at you through the lens of time. Sometimes they've given their testimony decades before, but you're sitting in a room and you're experiencing their wholeness, as it were, the most vulnerable time in their lives. In many cases, these survivors were children when they saw their parents murdered, or they saw a brother or sister taken away, or they themselves were attacked. So very traumatic experience, experience. I found myself affected by this and I became very aware of the vicarious elements of witnessing traumatic testimony, number one. And number two, I would say that the presence of the person comes into the room and the editor noticed it as well and said, I feel like I'm haunted by these people and I can't stop thinking about them. You could say, well, that's the vicarious trauma. From a scientific point of view, you could argue that, or you could say that is actually the presence of the person coming through, or you could say it's both. We can't measure the, the, the spirit, the essence of the person. We can't measure that. We can Feel it though. And, and I feel forever changed by sitting in a room with these 350 people. Some very short testimonies because they couldn't speak, they were in tears, others much longer. I'm forever changed by experiencing that. It's made me more conscious and also I feel more responsible. The human beings I'm working with. Her editor working on Rwandan genocide testimony told me that she was, she told me this maybe two years after she did the work. She said, you know, Carla, I didn't tell you this, but I was very, I was very affected by working with the testimony because some of these survivors, I mean, it's. We know it from the news reports, but it's one thing to know it or to read about it and another to have the person literally sitting in front of you on a big screen telling you what happened to them. Having an arm or a leg macheted or being thrown into a cesspool of, you know, fecal material or seeing, you know, a child decapitated, I mean, we all know, but experiencing it firsthand, as it were. It's not really firsthand, but it feels like it is. By having that person talk to you, I realized, gosh, I have to be very aware of this when I ask people to work with me because you shouldn't just assume that somebody can take it. It's not human, it's inhuman, it's beyond our capability, and yet it is part of our human condition. So there you are.
- [10:17]
A
Yeah, Gosh, I mean, that's some fantastically, I think, unsettling images, but valuable because you're beyond correct. It is 100% part of the human condition, both our humanity and our inhumanity. Nemesis 1921 revisits a Weimar era trial. What makes that story urgent for us today?
- [10:43]
B
I think Germans had a choice in 1921 and a choice about which direction they were going to go as far as their political culture was concerned. The trial distills that and makes it accessible to an audience to see. It's so easy to portray Hitler and Nazism as a monster. He was a monster, an aberration in history. But we know because genocide has recurred in the last century and continues, that it is something that can happen to any people. Any people, however so called civilized. We think the culture is. It can happen to any people. And I believe that we are all responsible for it at some level. And the trial shows how very incrementally the thinking about Germany's experience. Germany was a. An ally of Ottoman Turkey at the time of the Armenian genocide. They colluded in it. They provided arms, military assistance, communications. They knew exactly what was going on. A lot of people in the German military didn't like it. The German public didn't know about it because that news was still censored during the war, but later learned about it. There were German missionaries who were eyewitnesses and knew about it, but they knew about it. And so then there comes the question, well, did Germany learn how to do a genocide by witnessing the Armenian genocide? So did they learn how to do the Holocaust by witnessing the Armenian genocide? For me, that's an interesting question. Impossible to quantify, but we see very intelligent people grappling with what they should do. And there were people during this trial, intellectuals and people that you would admire. The lawyers. We tell the story through the lawyers in the legal system who say, we've got to confront our role in this. We've got to. We've got to look in the mirror and see that we were responsible. We held the gun while they, the Turks, shot it, but we provided them with, with the gun. And so for me, I find that kind of liberating at one level, getting back to the point about having agency, liberating in the sense that, well, if we have a choice, we could have chosen otherwise. We. And, and that, and that translates to where we are now. Perhaps some people think that we're sliding down the road towards authoritarianism, and others say, no, the people who are saying that are exaggerating and that isn't what's happening. We're at a different time and we know what could happen. But by being aware of how that slide happened in Germany and the steps of it, how incremental it was, and how the people at that time were grappling with, well, you know, Germany, we're a new democracy and, you know, we're very fragile. We can't afford to be blamed for Turkey's crimes, which is a very rational argument. And they're all. There always is a rational argument.
- [14:11]
A
There always is, you know.
- [14:13]
B
Yeah. So what do you do with that?
- [14:17]
A
So would you say that you see nemesis as history retold or as a mirror for our present today?
- [14:23]
B
I'd like to present it as a mirror. And I'd also. I'd like in other ways. There are other mirrors. It's about vigilantism and whether it's ever appropriate for somebody to assassinate or execute another human being. At the time that we've been in pre production for the movie, the new story of Luigi Mangioni murdering assassinating whatever verb you want to use, the healthcare executive. I mean, the horror of that. But people fascinated by this young man. Why did he do it? It's so interesting how his appearance even weighs into what's this nice, handsome young man. Even my own mother will say, he's such a nice young, handsome young man. Why did he do it? You could say the same thing about my handsome young man who did it in 1921. If there's a feeling that the law is not enough, people will take the law into their own hands. That's one argument. There was not a genocide, a law that could prosecute genocide perpetrators in 1921. And although the chief perpetrator of the Armenian genocide had been sentenced to death in his own country by a war tribunal, but had escaped to Germany, the law wasn't working. Even when it was a domestic law and he was found guilty, he escaped, escaped. There was no genocide convention. And interestingly, the. The man who created the United Nations Genocide Convention, Raphael Lemkin, he cited this trial as being the template for creating a law, an international law to prosecute prosecute genocide perpetrators. And the irony for Raphael Lemkin, who spent the whole of his life campaigning and finally getting this genocide convention passed in the United nations, his own family was lost in the Holocaust, so he's a law student in night in the 1920s. He reads about this trial in Germany and says, there's got to be a law. And then later his own family is wiped out, and then he spends the rest of his life trying to get. He believed in the law so much, he didn't give up on the law, which is also kind of interesting, but he believed in it so much that he spent his whole life trying to get it passed, and it did. And you could argue that in some ways that's an albatross. We have this convention, and it hasn't done anything to deter genocide perpetrators. But on the other hand, it's the only code of ethics we have at the moment.
- [17:01]
A
How do you balance historical accuracy with cinematic storytelling?
- [17:06]
B
Well, I have to tell you that very early in my Life, at age 11, I had and continue to have a friend who had what could only be described as extrasensory, if you want to call it, psychic experiences of a level that was so pronounced that everybody in my family circle and friends knew about this gift she had. And I don't want to go too much into her in detail because I think it's for her to tell her own story.
- [17:45]
A
But.
- [17:45]
B
But it impacted me profoundly because I came from a Family of teachers, and my father was a journalism professor. And I was surrounded by people who went into journalism, who became editors of magazines, became photojournalists. So that's the world of fact. And here was my closest friend growing up, who was seeing natural disasters, plane crashes, earthquakes, happening a couple days before they actually happened, experiencing. Being able to describe a place that she never visited in acute detail. Remote viewing, we call that now. And not only did these things was I able to. To witness her experience of it, but my. In my mind, I wanted to understand it. So I would test her. And, and, and through meditations and asking her questions and meditations, what was going on, what was she seeing? And, and I never really understood what the mechanism was. I don't think any of us know what the mechanism is. We can. We can make informed guesses about it. But the. The core of what I understood was there are things in this world of such a magnificent scale that we do not understand. And it made me open to that, open to that. But how do you live in that world and still be in the empirical world of fact and journalism and trying to corroborate and trying to hold politicians to account who lie routinely because they're in power. How do you speak truth to power? With fact, if at the same time I know about that other world and because she's so close to me and, and I know with every. Every bone, every molecule in my body that she's authentic because she's almost like my blood, that there's something going on with that that we don't understand. So I find myself in between, to use your phrase. But of course, in my world, you have to be very careful about talking about stuff like that because you could be discredited.
- [20:06]
A
Yes.
- [20:07]
B
Right.
- [20:07]
A
Yeah. So do you think that. And this is an interesting parallel, the concept of cinematic storytelling is perhaps an attempt at grasping at this ineffable element that wants to render historical accuracy but has a different perspective or a different foundation for such an argument.
- [20:27]
B
I do. And I think that because I do believe at some level there is a universal consciousness and that my friend is somehow tapping into that. She may be seeing various probable realities. So much of the time she's accurate, but there are times she's not. So then how do you explain that? I would say 85% of the time she's accurate. 15% she's not. But knowing that makes me believe that there is some kind of universal consciousness. And therefore, if the stories, the films I make, the truths that I uncover feed into that universal consciousness, In a way that can bend it towards people being more open, more inclusive, more understanding then that. That's probably a good thing. Of course, we can't. We can't know how it's going to impact the consciousness. It could have the opposite effect, right?
- [21:34]
A
It absolutely can, yeah. So then this storytelling element, which feels pretty significant when we're discussing what can't be empirically rendered, seems as though it's not only one of your personal driving forces, but the broader praxis of information conveyance from human to human. That's a valuable thing. That's at the core of everything we are. This reminds me that with Screamers, you put genocide survivor testimonies in conversation with music and film. Looking back, what remains most powerful about that work?
- [22:08]
B
The music which. The heavy metal music by System of a Down, which is the driving force throughout this film, initially alienated me, and I wondered, how am I going to work with this music? I didn't have the ear for it. And then I. I locked myself away one weekend and put it up really loud, which is important, and. And I suddenly heard an ethereal sound, a voice that I identified with, that was number one. And then the second element was I went to one of their concerts and saw the impact they were having on their audience, young people, and that. I was sitting at a table passing out pamphlets for the Armenian Film foundation, one of the nonprofits I work with, because the band wanted their. Their fans to learn about stuff. So there was Amnesty International and Armenian Film foundation and some other organizations. And I met some of these fans and I. And they were telling me, oh, I've learned about genocide through System of Down. Oh, I've learned about corruption and. And the environment through System of a Down. And I thought, oh, this is something that this band and music is motivating these young people. And so to answer your question, what I learned was that the band had an effect on this generation that could. I didn't expect. And I was able to connect to this younger generation in ways that I couldn't have done otherwise. I learned a lot about them and what matters to them. And the other. The other thing I learned working with this amazing band is the outrage and anger that I believe we should all feel in relation to the universal problem of genocide recurring. That anger and outrage has to be expressed and felt at some very visceral level. And it's too easy for people like me to be writing and intellectualizing about stuff and forget that that is the heartbeat. We have to feel the outrage. Now, what we do about it is something else. And sometimes I feel that way. I know it won't seem like a obvious parallel, but I sometimes feel that way about the animal world and our pets and farm animals and that there is a level of pain and suffering in the animal world that we humans, we put blinders on and we go la la la la la. I don't want to hear that. Because the ramifications of what we would need to do to address that suffering are so large. Or we, we see that they the from a policy level, what do we do to stop that suffering? And we can't even comprehend it. I think we can, by the way. It's not that difficult, but I think we can't comprehend it. So we try to block it out. But every so often, you know, a movie or something, a story or somebody's tick tock video, you know, we'll see about an animal that does an amazing thing or helps a human and it pierces apathy. And. And then I'm speaking for myself, I feel this tremendous shame and also a huge emotion that I am living alongside these, some of these amazing creatures who are so loving and caring and do so much to support us in a lot of ways. I may be anthropomorphizing that, but at a certain level they. There is this other level that we ignore. And so the band getting back to Screamer, the band shook me up and took me out of my intellectual apathy and moved me more towards the activism that I saw was necessary to support the message of the film. I never had to be in front of the camera as much in supporting a movie I've made. I've always relied on, you know, the players or the people I'm filming. But I was required to sell the film and to give a lot of interviews. And so I became an activist. It helped to have the outrage to do that.
- [26:38]
A
You said something brilliant a moment ago about the intellectual apathy you carried. Do you believe that the marriage of music with your film somehow broadened the emotional bridge that was intended for viewers of the film and for perhaps anyone who wouldn't be touched otherwise by a sterile, empirical documentary?
- [27:04]
B
I'd like to think that it did. I'd like to think it did. You know, heavy metal music is. You do have to have an ear for it. It did initially alienate some, some older folks, but what was funny about it was to go to screenings where you would see an 80 or a 90 year old show up because there were Armenian genocide survivors in the film. So they were going to See that? And then they'd come out sort of, you know, tapping their feet and saying, I kind of like those. So. So I. I think we can't underestimate the way music can work. And in the film I'm making now, just taking a step to one side, I'm a fan of Tarantino and how he uses music to cross genres. So we'll use Western music in a. In a German war film like Inglorious Basterds. And what that does is it kind of. It. It kind of breaks down paradigms the way that we're feeling watching a certain kind of period drama. He shakes it up by playing something from some other genre so that he's taking the emotions you might feel in watching a western with western style, you know, music, and putting it in a war movie. And I think it's so clever at. I'm not even sure he knows what's going to happen when he does that. He's just. So let's. Let's just shake it up and mix it all up. But I like that we've seen, you know, Netflix series that will take jazz music like Peaky Blinders and put it on a British crime mob from the late 19th century. Right. And, you know, who would do that? But that's. That allows you to reach a broader audience, I think. And that's certainly what I'm going to do with. With Nemesis. So. So it's been fun working with different musicians and hearing them play, sample different things, and me listen to it and saying, hey, that's got a meta message that this other genre of music doesn't have. So it's a challenge. But I. I like that challenge.
- [29:20]
A
It sounds more like an evolution, because if what I'm understanding is that Screamers surprisingly and somewhat mysteriously showed you the impact that music might have, perhaps you didn't calculate that originally, perhaps you did, but now you're moving forward with that intention of now applying the musical element to improve the storytelling. Is that something that you've really been putting a lot of thought into? Have you been storyboarding it and planning out tracks?
- [29:49]
B
I've. I've had some tracks. And what's always a challenge with independent film is you have to use people of different nationalities to get certain tax funds. And so I'm having to work within certain groups of people and getting to know who they are. So, for example, one might need to use a Spanish composer, where I actually have a composer based in Los Angeles. So I'm trying to grapple with the more practical technicalities of Things like that. But the bottom line of it or the core essence of it is what emotions do I think I'm able to bring out or engender through using a particular type of music? And I was very impressed by the crown. The music that was used for the crown and the composer there was representing the old establishment in Britain. And the way that he portrayed that through different instruments, the style was, Was really amazing. It. It showed me that, you know, you just have to keep pushing the boundaries and working with people. You know, the thing about music is you think you know what you want. A composer comes to you with a track you've never heard before and you're saying, well, that doesn't sound like what I know. And the, and the inclinations is to throw it out. You know, you can't do that. You have to be very open. At least for me, I'm speaking of myself, I have to be very open to a different sound and not throw it out because. Because it's unfamiliar.
- [31:32]
A
Fantastic. You know, I, I think that you're right. Most people will allow their taste to act as a bias that sometimes filters what's very valuable. That being the case with the testimonies that we see in Screamers, was there a moment in filming that changed you forever? A single testimony that you heard or something that you recognized you hadn't thought of before?
- [31:54]
B
Serj Tonkian's grandfather was featured in the movie, and the grandfather's story became a thread through the film. His grandfather at the time was in a convalescent hospital and was in the last really two years of his life. Of course, we didn't know that until later, but that's the way it was. And you could feel Serge trying to reach the grandfather that he knew through the illness and cloudiness. And he was also on some sedate, sedating drugs, which often happens in convalescent hospitals. And so he was very sleepy and not as alert. And there was this urgency to try to get his story when we were there filming, and the frustration that he wasn't as alert as he could have been and that the story wasn't coming out. So then Serge said, you know, there's a better interview of him on tape and we've got to look for it. It's in somebody's garage. And for the next year we were searching through boxes in different relatives garages looking for this tape. And eventually we had to use a low resolution VHS tape of this better quality tape which became. Which is in the movie. And who cared if it was low resolution? The Story was so vivid of seeing his brother die or his brother's grave. That was one story very emotional. And then the other story, his mother died and they put her body in, in the river and let the river take her dead body. And as a little boy, he ran back. This, the grandfather, as a little boy, ran back to the riverbank to try to see, you know, what happened to his mother's body and saw she had gotten caught in the reeds and the only way that they could release her body was to push her out from the reeds and her head broke away. And I just. Oh, my God. What can you imagine?
- [33:57]
A
No, I can't.
- [33:58]
B
I mean, just telling the story is. And, and yet this grandfather, like so many survivors, they are able either to compartmentalize or not compartmentalize, integrate that experience into their lives and move on and, and leave a country and arrive at a new country. He actually immigrated twice to Lebanon and then to America and make, and make a good life for himself after that experience.
- [34:27]
A
And it's interesting, talking about the VHS recording, the low resolution recording from a neurological focus, it looks like that's part of the story, you know, the medium is the message, isn't it? So this old kind of faded, almost like memory somewhat drifting out of focus sort of image is what tells the story best. I, I love that that was serendipity, but that it also, I'm sure, contributed to even the trend we see in films today. You know, so many films are trying to give a, an aged look to the, the visuals that they're presenting.
- [35:01]
B
And the other side of it is colorizing old footage. And when you see the colorized either photographs or, you know, archival newsreel or whatever, you go, oh, well, that's the way people really looked. I'm not seeing them in black and white. So. But those, those are real people, right? And I've had to think about the color palette very, you know, think about what am I trying to say? Am I trying to make you experience this as a so called old movie, or am I trying to get you to experience it as something contemporary? But the people are in period clothes and are, you know, talking in ways that is a little different. And, you know, it's a challenge.
- [35:44]
A
That's fantastic. I instantly remembered an interview I saw a long time ago. Frederico Fellini, on his filming of Satiricona, was using color intentionally to modify how you would feel towards a performer, how you would feel towards a scene, how. But this issue of color and old footage is very important, I know, to you you're searching for the lost 1919 film auction of Souls. What does the search itself represent for you and for history?
- [36:14]
B
Well, my. My old friend who I referenced earlier, told me that the search for the film was. Was paralleling the journey of making Nemesis, and she's always believed that I would find. This lost film, which was made in 1919, was a.1 of those silent movies that was a hit in its time, but like so many movies from that period, there aren't prints remaining because they are on nitrate, which was very inflammable and caused fires in theaters and archives everywhere. So, so many silent films are lost. But I've wanted to find it because it was the first film made about the Armenian genocide, was actually made while the genocide was still going on, and the person starring in it was a genocide survivor herself, had written a book about it, which had become a bestseller. And so the movie was based on the book, something we're familiar with now. So back in the day, they made a film based on her book, and I've wanted to find it because the foundation I work for has been searching for it since the late 60s. So I've continued the search, and as things become more digitized and inventories become posted and it's more easily available to search through an archive without having to go to an archive, I have thought, well, maybe the film will show up. I found other missing things, but I still haven't found this one. But it's kind of like the search for the Holy Grail. 1. One archivist, librarian, head librarian said to me, carla, if you find this film, it will be big news. Well, in a very small pond in the movie world, I said, yeah, I just want to find it, because, as my friend told me, she could see it. She could see it on the shelf. And she said, actually, there are three prints that have survived, but she could see one print on the shelf. And she said, the print's almost laughing, Carla, and is waiting for you to discover it. And the reason that it's not clear how to find it is because this is an exercise and you having faith in yourself in being able to find it. I said, oh, for heaven's sakes, tell me where it is. Forget these spiritual muscles.
- [38:37]
A
Yeah, let's be practical about the whole thing. I can totally relate. How do you see archives like the Armenian Film foundation or USC Showa foundation, not just as records, but as sacred spaces.
- [38:51]
B
So many of them are moving into the educational arena where students can experience a genocide survivor through a hologram show. A foundation is doing that in an ideal world, wouldn't it be great if we could just click a button and the survivor is standing in front of us, life size. Okay, maybe they're a little ghosted. And we know it's not a real person, but it's enough of reality and to get us to feel them and identify with them and talk with them. And I think that's where the technology is going. I'm getting in the room, in the classroom. And Shoah foundation also has Eyewitness, which is a website. Teachers and students can go on to learn how to ethically edit testimonies, to make little films, tell stories with the testimony, which I think is great. Every classroom, every teacher can have their own private space so that these things come to life. I know I can't speak for all of them, but I think the majority of the survivors would want to think that their voices are being heard through throughout time, or at least into the future, that is, they're not just stuck on a dusty shelf in an archive somewhere, you know, that being forgotten about, or we're only paying the rent on the archive. It's a film reel somewhere. No, they want it to be shared. They want their voices to be heard. The majority of them. Some of them don't, you know, it's very private. The trauma that I talked about, some of them don't want to share that trauma. It's too horrible. But I would. I think the majority of them would like to think that a young person is learning about it and that we. Maybe it's not a young person, maybe it's a journalist, maybe it's a film researcher, maybe it's an artist, maybe it's a composer wanting to be inspired in so many different ways. The archive also allows you to go across genocides, so you could search for all women who've experienced rape, you know, if you wanted to ask that question. And it'll give you, you know, experiences from different genocides or different age groups or, you know, whatever. So the research power of a searchable archive is. That's a new thing. And I think that's very exciting at a certain level, because if we're talking about the unconscious, the global consciousness, or the zeitgeist that we would like to influence, if we can have those stories out there. But again, we don't know is it going to have a good effect or a bad effect. But for those who want to learn about what's happened, it's out there. We're not hoarding, we're sharing.
- [41:42]
A
It's going to be available for, whether positive or negative, the world to be impacted by the world to be shaped by. Which brings to mind if Auction of Souls were found, whether through our friends help or some improved cataloging procedures, how would you want modern audiences to experience it?
- [42:00]
B
There have been some excerpts that survived, so I've seen a little taste of it. And the script is. Has been made available by the Academy of Motion Pictures and the publicity photos. So I have some idea of what's in it. I think what's astounding about it is it looks like news footage from the period, so it feels very like you're seeing almost like war footage, but it's not. It was staged in, you know, Santa Barbara and Palmdale and Aries around Los Angeles. So it's. But it's very. It feels very real. So I. I think it would allow there to be a discussion about what actually happened in a. In a macabre way. There's one scene in. In Auction of Souls that shows women being crucified on these big crosses that didn't actually happen in the Armenian genocide. And the survivor, whose story is. Is. Is shown in Auction of Souls, though the woman who acted in it, we have interviews of her, and she said, oh, no, it was much worse than that. We weren't put on big wooden crosses. They made us impale ourselves sitting on, you know, bayonet swords and things that were, you know, planted in the earth, upright and making women sit on them. And this was some kind of, you know, something out of Marquis de Sade. You know, it just in incredibly savage way of killing people. And she said, the movie makers knew about this and it was too horrible to put in a movie, so they showed women up on the cross. Every year, the Armenian Film foundation gets an inquiry from somebody who says, do you know about this film? Do you know about this footage? As if it's actuality. I mean, and I have to tell them, no, that didn't actually happen, but what happened in some ways was much worse. I mean, and being crucified is bad enough. Come on. But, but impaling a woman impaling herself is. Is. Seems to me to somehow be even worse. But, but that's. I. I forget what the question was.
- [44:10]
A
No, no, that's okay.
- [44:11]
B
Myself out of it.
- [44:13]
A
Well, and. And you took me out of it as well, because of course, the imagery of a crucifixion being the light version of what happened, if obviously the. The monstrous filmmakers themselves decided their audiences couldn't stomach what was actually going on is beyond gruesome. Still part of the human condition and therefore valid, but frightening to behold. No, I was really thinking about how you would like to see Auction of Souls present it to modern audiences. Would you want it to be as it was filmed or broken up into segments so that you have some relief from the imagery? Maybe you'd like to see it conveyed with a musical vehicle, Something that would make it more palatable and therefore more acceptable, like castor oil and the orange juice for a baby. How would you want to present it to modern audiences?
- [45:04]
B
A very good question. I haven't allowed myself to think about what we would do because the journey about, of finding it has been so, you know, all inclusive, I think. I'm thinking I'll jinx myself if I think about that. But on the other hand, maybe I should manifest finding it and think about the screening. I've always, I guess in my mind's eye, like so many silent movies that have been found, you get a. You get a great organist who's used to accompanying. They bring their own score to it. I would try to find, you know, it was played with a live organ in the movie houses around the world and try to find some of the. The music that was used. But try to have the experience of being, you know, going to a silent movie. It. It does feel a little bit like the chic, you know, over sensationalized how the, you know, the bad Ottoman Turk is raping the. The harem, the girls in the harem. And it's got that feeling in the excerpts I've seen. And I think the movie audience would probably experience it that way, but it would also be for the Armenian group who's experienced this, those who want to learn about genocide and see, this is the first popular feature film about a genocide that we are aware of. So presenting it as how the culture at that time represented genocide in. In a movie, I think that's. So it's probably important to keep it intact.
- [46:35]
A
So.
- [46:35]
B
But now you've got me going. Now I get to imagine how I would see the screen and then I'll find the film, right?
- [46:43]
A
You will find it, but I hope it doesn't keep you up at night. So this brings me to the point of how has your family's survivor legacy shaped the way you create?
- [46:53]
B
That's. It's funny because I now have part of my family story that is. Is being represented in a play in New York City called Meet the Cartosians. My great grandfather was part of a trial himself in the United States in the same period, 1922. I think it was. And the Cartosian trial became a very important case in US immigration law, which is how race is used to define somebody's immigration status. And in that trial, it needed to be determined that my great grandfather, what his race was in order to decide whether he should be deported or not. And if that's sort of familiar, it is what's going on now. And they had various people come into the court, they had to decide whether Armenians were African American or black or Negroid, whatever you would call it in those days. And so they had different anthropologists coming in. As an Armenian is from the Caucasus, they're white. Yes, but they're sort of swarthy looking. They're. The whole, the whole trial turned on this. So there's now a play that is based on this trial, which is. Which is called Meet the Cartosian. So I thought, well, that's. I'm now having my family history put into the popular consciousness. I don't know how I feel about that. One day getting back to the supernatural. One day in 2006, when I was making Screamers, I wanted to show this part of my family history, the Cartosian family. And I was searching for the exit document amongst my various relatives. There's a very large group of Cartosians scattered amongst California, Oregon, Washington State. And so we have a reunion every two years. And so I put the message out, does anybody have the exit document for my great grandfather leaving Turkey, coming to the United States? And so we have the different relatives looking for it and letting me know Carla so and so might have it. And then, you know, with another search getting absolutely nowhere. So one day I was sitting thinking about this in my bedroom, like, what am I going to do? I would really like to show this in, in, in my documentary. It's. It just feels very kind of tactile to show this very large piece of parchment because in those days the passports weren't little, they were. The exit visas were like written on parchment in French and Ottoman Turkish and interesting the way. And suddenly the fragrance of cedar filled my room. And I hadn't opened anything, I hadn't done anything. I was just sitting in my bed looking out of the window basically, and I thought, something is telling me to open the cedar chest in my room, my grand grandmother's cedar chest, which I have happened to have as a piece of furniture, you know, covered with a tablecloth in my room. I opened it up, I said, you know, I've looked here before. Something said, look further, look further. And would you Believe on the bottom, the bottom of the chest, which I hadn't looked at before because I had to take out the shelves, there was the exit document.
- [50:06]
A
Wow.
- [50:08]
B
Which is, again, how could that be in a physical sense, what was going on? Somebody reaching out from the other side saying, we want you to find it.
- [50:19]
A
Right.
- [50:19]
B
Okay. So the only way we can get you to open the cedar chest is to somehow give you the sense of smelling cedar. There's no other reason why I would open it.
- [50:32]
A
And it's profound that you're getting assistance from the unknowable and the unseen in the very material, very physical, very empirical work that you're doing. Seeing these two walk hand in hand is a very rare event. So I certainly count you as lucky.
- [50:48]
B
Well, you're the expert on that, so I think you could. You could speak more to that than. Than myself.
- [50:54]
A
I appreciate that. But each experience, I think, in its. In its sovereignty is valuable and certainly a testimony to the work that you're doing that it's obviously being pointed in a direction that has the attention of more than just your audiences. That being said, Looking at Nemesis 1921, at Screamers and your archival work, what do you most hope to leave as your personal legacy?
- [51:18]
B
I think for myself personally there. I recognize that there is a generational wound, if you want to call it that, because I'm a descendant of a genocide, genocide survivor. I'd like to think that I've gone some way towards healing that for myself and for the people, my group, as it were, in the Armenian diaspora, but a much wider group, the world population that we do have within ourselves the capability of stopping this behavior. We have to think differently. And if we can learn about how the creep, creep, creep, the incremental march towards this extreme behavior happens, and if I can show that, expose that, then maybe once we see it, you can't unsee it. I'd like to think that's what I can do. I don't know if that's possible. But then the people who saw, you know, Cameron's Titanic talked about that ship and all the people who could be saved on that ship for years and years and years and years. So a sense of injustice, maybe if one exposes that and it kind of catches the imagination, the zeitgeist, as it were, you can tap that in some way. Maybe. Maybe it can make a difference. That's maybe a grandiose version of what I could do, but at the. At the minuscule level, it's really healing myself at some level. And I'd also feel that my grandparents would feel, you know, that they imparted the story of what happened to our family. They didn't do that in vain. It was to somehow, you know, help. Help what would happen in the future.
- [53:06]
A
Your work certainly looks to me as though it's helping to preserve what perhaps in its own time was eclipsed and creating new vehicles for this previously eclipsed information. You're keeping memory alive while giving it new cinematic form. That's profound because you really are leaving hooks for future generations to hopefully learn, I would think, the mistakes of the past, if not then connecting, crossing the bridge, finding some sort of an anchoring in history that they would have no other real awareness of outside of your. Your help, outside of your assistance. So to that end, I want to thank you for being a guardian of stories the world really has tried to silence. And depending on where our current zeitgeist takes us, one would imagine that your work will never really be done. Of course, we're hoping you're going to find your archive. But if Auction of Souls never does make itself available, that doesn't mean that you can't still tell the story. Its relevance, its validity, its value is here with us. It's in front of our face today and probably will be for a very long time. So I, of course want to thank you for your guardianship, for your. Your stewardship of the stories that the world has tried to silence, and of course, than for sharing all of your insights in parting. I do want to know, in this piece that really has stuck with me, this idea of what kind of assistance you think you are getting, either from your ancestors or just any sort of a tutelary influence that wants you to experience something numinous in the work that you do is this numinous thrust, this idea of wanting to impart unto others a sense of the indescribable, one of your motivating forces as a documentarian, as a journalist, as a human.
- [54:57]
B
I think it is. And I know that when I ask for help and support, I get it in some way. It might be an unexpected way. And the. It's very easy to give up. It's very easy to put your head down and say, I just. I don't want to. I don't want the burden of. And who am I to think that I'm somebody who could even aspire to these various goals I told you about shared with you. But it's easy to sort of thing, you know, I just want to give up. And I feel supported by these unseen forces and I'd like to think that when I ask for help, I'm heard. It does seem that I get the answers in ways that are relevant in thinking that I am being supported and heard. It keeps me going, it gives me sustenance. And I think sometimes it also makes me slow down and be more human and caring a little bit more about the people around me so that I know I'm not working on my own. And I have editors who need to be cared for and other people who can be affected. And that you, you need to be conscious of your team. You're not just one person conscious of.
- [56:13]
A
Your collective, your connection to the people who make it work, whether those people who make it work are here or not here. It's still the same level of connectivity. That is a beautiful note to end on. Thank you so much for your time today, Carla. I'll look forward to talking to you again soon.
- [56:28]
B
Thank you for asking me.
- [56:29]
A
Absolutely. Cheers. Take care of yourself. What Dr. Carla Garapedian has shared with us today is more than history. It is an act of guardianship, a living resistance against forgetting. Through her journalism, her films, and her tireless archival work, she reminds us that memory is not static. It is a bridge between past and present, a call to responsibility and a plea for conscience. Whether confronting the silence around the Armenian genocide, tracing the fragile interwar moment in Germany, or weaving testimony with music and cinema, Carla's work insists that we look clearly at the incremental steps that lead to atrocity and the agency we still have to choose differently. She embodies what it means to honor the voice of of those who came before, while leaving a path for future generations to follow. Carla, thank you for your guardianship, for your courage, and for showing us that even in the darkest chapters, there is still light to be carried forward. Before we part ways today, if this conversation stirred something in you or offered a spark of insight, would you take just a moment to share that light back? Leave us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. It's one of the simplest ways to help the observable unknown reach new seekers and fellow travelers. Your words matter more than you know, and they help this circle grow. Until next time. Remember, what appears unknowable often stands right before us, waiting to be observed through both the lens of science and the wisdom of spirit. This is Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscumbboard.com inviting you to look deeper into the observable unknown.