On October 21, Grammy Award-winning band SYSTEM OF A DOWN will receive the 2015 Parajanov-Vartanov Institute Award for the virtuous commitment to justice exemplified by their historic "Wake Up The Souls" tour. The event will take place on October 21 at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood.The institute studies, preserves and promotes the work of the brothers-in-arts Sergei Parajanov and Mikhail Vartanov, who, like SYSTEM OF A DOWN, dedicated their lives to the righteous fight against the injustices of totalitarian regimes. Parajanov (1924-1990) and Vartanov (1937-2009) were admired by some of the most important figures in cinema, literature and art.Proceeds from the October 21 event will benefit the restoration of Vartanov's "Parajanov: The Last Spring" film trilogy at UCLA.Earlier this year, SYSTEM OF A DOWN made international headlines with their "Wake Up The Souls" tour, a global trek that commemorated April's 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, an attempted extermination of the Armenian people by the Ottoman Empire. From 1915 through 1923, 1.5 million men, women and children were starved, shot and banished to die in the desert during one of history's greatest crimes. Though considered by many to be the first genocide of the 20th century, the Turkish government denies it ever happened.The arena tour was the bands first since 2013 and included their first-ever performance in Armenia at Yerevan's Republic Square.The October 21 event follows the institute's successful collaboration last year with Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project on the restoration of Parajanov's "The Color Of Pomegranates" (1969), which was funded by George Harrison's widow Olivia Harrison through their Material World Charitable Foundation and The Film Foundation.According to the institute's founder Martiros Vartanov, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unearthed in their archive last year Mikhail Vartanov's suppressed 1969 film, "The Color Of Armenian Land". Vartanov was blacklisted for making the 15-minute short, which portrayed dissidents Sergei Parajanov (imprisoned in 1973) and Minas Avetisian (assassinated in 1975).When Vartanov's artistic freedom was restored, he responded with "Minas: A Requiem" (1989) and "Parajanov: The Last Spring" (1992), which, much like SYSTEM OF A DOWN's oeuvre, condemns political persecution and imprisonment in an unconventional artistic language. "Parajanov: The Last Spring" was created during the one hour daily quotas of electricity, in a war-torn and blockaded winter Armenia, after the country gained its independence shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Though edited under the candlelight, it earned praise from some of cinema's greatest luminaries, including 2014 honoree Martin Scorsese. With half of American films made before 1950 (and 80% made before 1929) forever lost, movies created in developing countries are in catastrophic danger of disappearing. The institute hopes to save this highly regarded masterwork, an indelible document of the country's 5000-year history.
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