‘Music to Madness’ film to debut at SDSU April 22

SAN DIEGO (SDJW) —Music to Madness, the story of Komitas will premiere at San Diego State University.  This documentary focuses on the career of Komitas (1869-1935), a brilliant Armenian composer, gifted singer, and tireless musicologist whose research preserved over 3,000 Armenian folk songs.

He was arrested along with other Armenian intellectuals and leaders on April 24, 1915 and sent on a death march.  Saved by the intervention of influential Americans and Europeans, he went mad and spent the rest of his life in a French psychiatric hospital.

The director David Robert Deranian wrote and directed the science fiction film Singularity Principle and is completing another entitled The 2nd Law.  The film features interviews with a variety of experts on Komitas and the Armenian Genocide including San Diego Jewish World columnist Laurie Baron.

Music to Madness will be screened on Tuesday, April 22nd at 7:00 PM in the Templo Mayor Room of the Conrad Prebys Aztec Student Union on the SDSU campus.  Deranian will introduce the film and then answer questions after it is shown.  The screening is being co-sponsored by the Armenian Student Association, The Baron Fund for Ethics Education, Center for Arabic and Islamic Studies, Departments of History, and Religious Studies, and School of Theatre, Television and Film, Phi Alpha Theta, and St. John Garabed Armenian Church.   The screening is free and open to the public.

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