CHRISTIAN BALE, OSCAR ISAAC TO STAR IN KIRK KERKORIAN PRODUCED FILM ON

 Jeannie Law, Christian Post Reporter

"The Promise" hits theaters this weekend and while it features a love story about a journalist (played by A-list actor Christian Bale) who's stuck in a riveting love triangle, what the film is actually about is the 1914 genocide of Armenian Christians.

The Armenian Genocide is "one of the greatest and least known catastrophes of the 20th century," says director and co-writer Terry George (" Hotel Rwanda"). And as a Christian watching the film one can't ignore the strong faith of Armenian Christians portrayed throughout the film.

Beginning with a blessing and ending in a prayer, the film journeys through opportunity, disappointment, love, war, death and victory. With a strong reverence for their faith, those who are being persecuted are seen attending church, sacrificing themselves for others, looking to clergy for shelter and guidance, and ultimately fighting to keep their people alive as they proudly display a cross bearing banner as their representation.

A short synopsis of the film reads: "Medical student Michael (Oscar Isaac) meets beautiful dance instructor Ana (Charlotte Le Bon) in late 1914. Their shared Armenian heritage sparks an attraction that explodes into a romantic rivalry between Michael and Ana's boyfriend, Christopher (Christian Bale), an American photojournalist who's dedicated to exposing the truth. As the Ottoman Empire crumbles into war-torn chaos, their conflicting passions must be deferred as they join forces to get themselves and their people to safety." 

In the historical drama, Michael survives death multiple times, prompting his family to openly thank "Jesus" for it when he escapes a labor camp. Unfortunately, those around him don't have the same good fortune and one by one they are killed, making the film an emotional roller coaster that you will not want to stop watching.

One of the most climatic part of "The Promise" is when the unlikely pair of allies, Michael and Christopher, encounter the Ottoman massacre of Michael's entire village. That eventually leads them to join a group of refugees who are determined to fight the Ottoman army.

 

The movie eventually comes to a positive end, but not before breaking viewers' hearts one last time.

Concluding years after the genocide has ended, the film leaves a sense of uncertainty about whether or not the Armenian people would ever be truly be free from oppression. The main character prays, "Dear Lord, Help us survive these cruel times so we may once again sing your praises."

The film also ends with a powerful poem by William Saroyan.

I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.

"The Promise" will be playing in theaters nationwide on April 21. For more information, click here.

image: http://d.christianpo...the-promise.png

(Photo: Grace Hill Media)In this scene, Michael temporarily manages to avoid conscription in the Turkish army through a medical student exemption with the help of a friend, April 21, 2017.

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By Bruce Walker

Go see The Promise, a movie opening nationwide Friday. Hollywood has mostly ignored the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks during World War I, and subsequently pursued by the Turkish Republic. At last we have a film like The Promise, which focuses on the Armenian experience, but also the Greeks and Assyrians who were brutally victimized.

A Turkish official taunting starving Armenian children with a piece of bread

There is no uglier word in any language than genocide, which is perhaps why the word is used so sparingly. Both denotatively and connotatively the word conjures up the worst crimes against humanity — the attempted eradication of entire races, nationalities or religions. Men, women, children. To utter the word is to open the most horrific casebook against the entirety of the human race and rocks the very foundations of our divinely designed hearts and souls.

However, hesitancy to use the word in question does us no favors. Neither does splitting hairs over whether the definition applies to one mass slaughter but not another. Whether narrowly or broadly applied, genocide is still genocide, and has happened with alarming frequency these past 100-some years. The term itself was coined in 1943 to designate the Armenian Genocide, which began in 1915. Generally acknowledged as the first genocide of the past century, the Armenian genocide claimed an estimated 1.5 million Armenian, Assyrian and Greek Christians who were systematically rounded up by the Ottoman Turks.
  

Ironically, while the World War I era witnessed new technological achievements in the mass slaughter of human beings on the battlefield, the Ottoman Turks resorted to the time-tested methods of firing squads, physical labor, starvation, dehydration and disease while introducing relatively new concepts in genocide: the concentration camp as well as exposure to germs and gases. The elderly, women and children who avoided immediate execution and camps were subjected barbarically to death marches through the Syrian desert (chillingly recounted in British rocker Julian Cope's song "The Armenian Genocide"). Those who survived often were sold into sexual slavery. Churches and historical monuments were destroyed.

How best to educate en masse these historical atrocities? It never seems adequate to recite merely dates and the numbers and ages of victims. Yet the urge to express such horrors often resonates with authorial hubris. "Show, don't tell" is a maxim for effective writing, but the effort to depict the violence and indifference to human suffering can seem calculated — in Hamlet’s words — to out-Herod Herod. Unless the writer is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Elie Wiesel or other luminaries occupying the sparsely populated literary pantheon of scribes able to gut-wrenchingly depict mass cruelties, the temptation to equal or outdo their efforts invariably yields disappointing results.

Too often, as well, some attempts serve to desensitize the reader to the true magnitude of despicable human behavior by focusing too much on sadistic and sinister actions. It's far easier to convey physical anguish than it is to render mental torture. The same theory applies equally to the visual arts as it does literature. For example, many cinematic portrayals of 20th-century inhumanities could easily be stripped of their Nazi trappings and such, and wind up as generic entries in a torture-porn franchise such as the Saw series.

This, finally, brings your writer to the topic at hand — an endorsement of the new film The Promise, which avoids the pitfalls outlined above in admirable fashion. All prior reservations about viewing a film centered upon genocide were put to rest when it was revealed the movie is more about how the historical events affected the families and romantic relationships of the story's characters. Yes, there is onscreen brutality and (brief) scenes featuring piles of discarded bodies — but such scenes are given a verite rather than a sensationalist treatment that contribute to the narrative rather than disturbingly and nauseatingly distract from it. In short, the filmmakers strike the right balance, and the $100 million budget ensures superb production values.

Credit for the film's realism devoid of over-the-top graphic depictions is due in large part to the direction of Terry George, who cut his teeth on such films as Jim Sheridan's The Boxer and the Bruce Willis film Hart's War before writing and directing Hotel Rwanda, which details a more recent incident of genocide and for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. George directed from a compelling script he co-wrote with Robin Swicord. The lush cinematography was provided by Javier Aguirresarobe.

The Promise stars A-list actors Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale, as well as international thespians Charlotte Le Bon, Jean Reno and Shohreh Aghdashloo. Isaac portrays Michael Boghosian, a Turkish Armenian who stakes a portion of his fiancée's dowry pursuing a medical degree in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul). Through his Turkish classmate, the son of an Ottoman general, Boghosian meets the American photojournalist Chris Myers (Bale), having already met and become smitten with Myers' radiant female companion (Le Bon). Their ensuing love triangle is one emotional thread that weaves together the historical events of the film, echoing both the novel and film Doctor Zhivago, another love triangle set against a tumultuous historical backdrop. Another thread is Boghosian's tight-knit family and their shared Christian devotion.

The Promise's compacted storytelling betrays the film's epic ambitions, which in another context would appear to be a negative assessment. On the contrary, one measure of art's quality is the recipient's desire for more than is delivered and, such is the richness of the story's tapestry and the fullness of even the most minor characters, this is a high compliment indeed. In fact, the film's running length underscores the tragedy of the massive number of Armenian, Greek and Assyrian lives abbreviated horrifically during the first genocide of the modern era. The Promise is highly recommended.

 http://www.churchmil...e-right-balance

• 16:47 | April 27,2017 | Social
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The screening of Hollywood “The Promise” movie, which tells about the Armenian Genocide, has kicked off in the cinemas of Yerevan. As Gohar Nalbandyan, Head of Marketing Department of “Cinema Star”, told “A1+” 60 percent of tickets of the screening at 10:30 has sold out. 90 percent of tickets for evening screening of the movie have already sold out. What’s more people are interested both in Armenian, Russian and English screenings of the movie. “Manly Hollywood movies arise such interest, but it is unprecedented that such a flow stats from early in the morning. Usually the audience visit cinemas in the evening.”

The information department of Moscow Cinema also informed that almost all the tickets for “The Promise” have sold out. “We thought that there would be less interest in English screening of the movie, but the people are much interested also in that screening.”

“The Promise” movie was created with the financial support of American-Armenian billionaire Kirk Kerkorian. The world premiere was held on April 21. The screening in Russia will also kick off on April 27.

http://en.a1plus.am/1259502.html

Directed by Terry George (Hotel Rwanda), The Promise received a major marketing push in the past couple of months. This huge production was the longtime dream of the billionaire, 17-year-long owner of MGM studios of Armenian origin, the Las Vegas mogul and philanthropist Kerk Kerkorian. After providing the movie’s massive $100 million budget, Kerkorian, passed away in 2015, before he could see the production.

The Promise, which is one of the most expensive independently financed movies of all time, is a 2016 Hollywood production that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last September. It has been in theatres around the world since April 21.

The film is a heart-wrenching tale of love, loyalty and survival set against the tragic backdrop of the Ottoman Empire’s systematic plan to exterminate its Armenian minority which, carried out in the period 1915-1922, left over 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children dead.

Oscar Isaac, a Guatemalan-American actor plays the role of an Armenian medical student, Mikael Boghossian. Christian Bale, the English Academy Award winner, plays the role of Christopher Myers, the American AP journalist, while Charlotte Le Bon, the Canadian actress plays Ana Kassarian, the Armenian dance instructor and painter who lived most of her life in France but was settled in Constantinople, with whom both men fell in love.

The film opens with the name of Kerkorian’s production company, Survival Pictures; in itself a telling reminder of the forget-me-nots half buried in the sands which, when the wind blows, reveal themselves as the centennial badge commemorating the genocide. The sand and desert symbolise the long marches Armenians were forced to endure during their deportation.

The film opens with a general scene of Siroun village in Southern Turkey where the Boghossian family lived and were the first to bring medicine to its people. Mikael’s first appearance is in the pharmacy where he sells medicine while narrating, “We Christians and Muslims used to live peacefully with each other.”  Christian Armenians, who lived with Muslim Turks for centuries, were driven out not by religion, but by a modern ideology: Nationalism.

Mikael is engaged to a girl from his village, Maral (Angela Sarafian), the only American actress in the film of Armenian origin. Mikael must continue his medical studies in Constantinople but he intends to keep his promise to return to Siroun to marry her. In Constantinople, Mikael stays with his uncle, a textiles trader named Messrob Boghossian, in whose house he also meets Ana, the dance instructor who is the journalist Christopher Myers – Bale’s partner. They fell in love with each other. At the Imperial Medical School, in the meantime, Mikael meets a Turkish colleague, Emrai Ogun. They soon became loyal friends. In the next two scenes the Armenian propensity for talent and hard work is amply demonstrated.

When the teacher asks both Mikael and Emrai to remove parts of a cadaver, only Mikael is able to carry out the request while Emrai, who isn’t very fond of medicine, cannot; Emrai faints when he sees blood. Mikael, who believes in his abilities, having told his father, “I will make you proud papa” before leaving for Constantinople, helps his Turkish colleague to disentangle the cadaver’s spine. Emrai takes to introducing his Armenian colleague as “my friend and mentor”, showing that many Turks perceived Armenians to be better educated and more astute in commerce and trade. At a night club when Ana is invited by a Turkish dancer to accompany her in a belly dancing performance, she proves herself the Turkish dancer’s equal.

When World War I erupts in 1914 while Turkey is allied to Germany, Armenia aligns itself with its neighbour Russia; Armenians are fed up with Turkish mistreatment, especially now that Turkey has declared war on all Christians not allied with it. Medical students are exempted from joining the Turkish military but Armenian students who are also Ottoman citizens are not. Emrai bribes the police officer with a gold coin to prevent his Armenian friend Mikael from joining the Ottoman army, something for which he is punished and later forced to join the army instead of going back to his studies. Emrai hates that, describing the military costume he wears as “ridiculous”. His father, often described by his son as “a fanatic” is the one who, later in the movie, orders the execution of his own son for being a traitor: An example of Turkish brutality of the time.

The director does not omit Gomidas Vartabed, the Armenian priest, musicologist and singer who is considered the father of Armenian music. Gomitas is among the intellectuals arrested on the eve of April 24, 1915 by the Ottomans. In one short scene the priest is seen conducting a mass in which he performs one of his compositions, Kohanamk when violence erupts outside the church. While Turkish gendarmes are firing and destroying Armenian shops, the camera focuses on Gomidas’s candle-lit face, but soon the picture fades and blurs over. Gomidas has stopped singing and composing forever.     

Oscar Isaac gives a masterful performance. When the Turkish gendarmes arrest Mikael among thousands of men for imprisonment and torture at a labour camp on the Thaurus Mountains, he manages to catch a train and escape in heavy rain under the cover of darkness. In this powerful scene he fights to survive the weather conditions and the fatal speed of the train carrying the Armenian slaves who beg him to “open the door, save us, we need water.” While trying to open the door for them he has no choice but to throw himself into the river to be saved.

Mikael is seen kissing the cross around his neck while trying to catch the train, indicating that he still believes in God unlike some others who lost their faith during the genocide. And sure enough God saves Mikael, who reaches Siroun, marries Maral and then goes off to look for Ana and Chris at the Protestant Mission, where he requests help to save his family and take them out of the village. This is the night of the great escape when Armenian orphans were carried out of the mission in a cart in the process of an evacuation prompted by prior warnings of an impending attack.

In the forests Mikael notices the Turkish gendarmes riding his family’s horses. Another powerful, yet sad scene: While hiding, Mikael’s suspicious and fearful expressions indicate that he can guess that his family has already been attacked. Walking down the river he finds a mass of corpses near the shore. As he approaches the bodies, Mikael identifies his family members there, including his pregnant wife Maral, his father, and his mother who is still alive. The way he weeps over the corpses calling their names is truly heartbreaking.

In the meantime the Turkish police have arrested Chris and confiscated the notebook in which he has been documenting all that he is witnessing. At the police headquarters Farouk Pasha investigates Chris’s notes and asks him to confess that his reports are fabrications. Chris refuses and ends up in jail. As a journalist Chris is keen that people outside Turkey should be informed of what the Turks are doing to the Armenians. Christian Bale’s role shows the unique importance that war correspondents play in war time, documenting violence in both words and images, listening to the accounts of survivors and observers, and sharing news with the masses. The attempt to silence Chris in the movie resonates with what Erdogan has recently been doing to his own people – with government actions against freedom of _expression_ constituting a throwback to the time in the film.

In an ironic conversation with Mikael, while Chris is uncomfortable about Mikael’s love affair with Ana, Chris shouts, “Without reporters the Armenian people will disappear and no one will know about them.” In another scene at the lobby of the hotel where Chris and Ana are staying and also where Ana and Mikael are seen together, unable to express his anger to their faces, Chris shouts at the telegram clerk helping him to report the news, “Armenian men are being taken and murdered and their women and children are being taken to the desert. Send that.” Here as elsewhere, though it hurts him, Chris never blames Mikael and Ana for their relationship.

Chris is always there to report the truth and to help Armenian refugees overcome their tragedy. He is also reporting news to the then US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau. Played by American actor James Cromwell, who looks like the real Morgenthau’s twin brother, Morgenthau’s role in the movie is very small, but it is nonetheless essential. In one short but crucial scene Morgenthau goes to see Talaat Pasha (Aaron Neil), the Ottoman Empire’s minister of interior and the main architect of the genocide, to make a formal request to release Chris to be deported to Malta. “You want to silence him, he is telling the truth,” the ambassador says. In return Talaat Pasha makes the shocking request that Morgenthau should turn over the names of Armenians who have American life insurance policies so that the state can collect the payouts. The ambassador denies the request and leaves.

For his part Emrai Ogun, who was forced to serve in the Ottoman army after his father discovers he was trying to help Armenians in their distress, is the one who sends a telegram to Morgenthau informing him that “American reporter Christopher Myers is at the army headquarters, he will be executed”. The Turkish police discover Emrai’s treason and shoot him. AP journalist Christopher Myers and ambassador Henry Morgenthau are considered eyewitnesses to the atrocities. Other similar characters did exist at the time who provided important and valuable insights into the events during and after the genocide. There are for example the English writer, political officer and archaeologist Gertrude Margaret Bell and the German soldier and human rights activist Armin Wegner.

One of the battles Armenian refugees fought bravely was the battle of Musa Dagh at Mount Moses on the Mediterranean caost. Before the end of the movie, the audience watches 4,000 Armenian refugees using their own rifles and what few cannons they have to fight for 53 days. A huge flag with a red cross is sewn by women refugees and placed by the side of the cliff facing the sea. Chris arrives on a battleship of the French Navy to look for Mikael and Ana and rescue them with the rest of the refugees who were transported to Port Said, Egypt on September 15, 1915. Unfortunately Ana drowns when the wind overturns her boat. Chris and Mikael settle in the United States.

During the Musa Dagh battle, when Mikael is holding his rifle for self defence, apparently he is unable to use it “I couldn’t pull the trigger,” he tells Ana, and it is unclear whether it’s because his character cannot take revenge – even on the Ottoman gendarmes or because, being a doctor, he can only heal fellow human beings – or simply because he cannot technically operate the rifle.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the profits from The Promise’s theatrical run are going to be donated to non-profit organisations, including the Elton John AIDS Foundation and other humanitarian and human rights organisations.

The movie closes in Massachussets with Mikael raising a toast in Armenian at the wedding of Yeva, the Boghossian girl he adopted. “May God bless and protect our children,” he says, then he addresses the orphans who are invited to the wedding and makes a great speech: “They’re here, your parents and all those families lost in an attempt to wipe our nation from the face of the earth. But we’re still here, we’re still here…”

In the end there is not one but several promises: The promise Mikael makes to the woman he is engaged to; the Armenians’ promise never to forget; and the filmmakers’ promise never to stay silent.

After 102 years, officials in Turkey continue to deny the systematic killings, and a propaganda campaign was created to discredit The Promise after its first screening in September. The film’s IMDb (Internet Movie Database) page has received more than 86,000 user votes with one-star ratings, but reaction on social media has been equally intense.

American musician and singer Chris Cornell’s closing song The Promise too is a masterpiece. Performed and written by Cornell himself, it says, “If I had nothing to my name, but photographs of you rescued from the flame. That is all I would ever need, as long as I can read what’s written on your face. The strength that shines behind your eyes, the hope and light that will never die. One promise you made, one promise that always remain, no matter the price a promise to survive, persevere and thrive, as we’ve always done…”

Although The Promise has fewer scenes of brutality than any other film on the genocide, it brought tears to my eyes perhaps more than any other. My ancestors’ struggle to survive is something I am still going through, and it makes me both sad and proud.

http://weekly.ahram....News/20362.aspx

Chris Cornell’s widow Vicky has said that the musician was deeply affected by the Armenian Genocide.

The full video of Vicky Cornell accepting the L.A. Chefs for Human Rights Hero Award on behalf of her late husband, the Soundgarden frontman, earlier this week has now surfaced.

Chris Cornell was honored at a fundraising event for Program for Torture Survivors (PTV) at the award-winning restaurant Cassia for his humanitarian efforts and his original song and music video “The Promise.”

“Chris was deeply affected by the Armenian story, one of our close friends is Dr. (Eric) Esrailian, the producer of the film and the great grandson of survivors of the Genocide," she said.

"He also understood how profoundly my own Greek family had been affected by the events of 1915. My grandparents had themselves been refugees. Because of these human stories, he wanted to use the song to reach people in their hearts. Through music, he wanted to spread the message that we have a shared humanity, that we must care for each other and not turn our backs on the atrocities being committed against innocent people. The more Chris learned about this dark chapter and the history of the Armenian people, he couldn’t help but acknowledge the similarities in what is happening in Syria today, among other countries.”

In 2017 Cornell wrote the theme song for "The Promise", ultimately becoming one of his biggest hits. Cornell cited a connection with "The Promise" through his Greek wife, whose family had been affected by the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian Genocide. This prompted his family to tour refugee camps in Greece, where they formed the Chris and Vicky Cornell Foundation, to help aid child refugees and the issues affecting them. At the time of the song’s release, Cornell stated, “[The Promise] is mainly about paying homage to those we lost in the Armenian Genocide, but it’s also about shining a light on more recent atrocities.”

http://panarmenian.n...eng/news/247068

Set against the backdrop of the Armenian Genocide which occured for about one decade from 1915, The Promise centres on Armenian student Mikael (Oscar Isaac), Armenian-born Ana (Charlotte Le Bon) and Paris-based American journalist Chris (Christian Bale). Around their affairs of the heart, escalating tensions between the ruling Ottoman Empire and Armenians flare into ethnic cleansing.

Chris Zakaryan is an Armenian-born bloke who lives in Sydney and works as a Financial Analyst with Uniting Financial Services. Unlike you and me, when Chris watched The Promise, he knew whether it was fact or fiction.

“For us Armenians, we know a lot more, so we can find bits and pieces which are not quite sticking together,” reports Chris about The Promise. “But for someone who doesn’t know anything, I think it was a great introduction to motivate someone to do more research, to find out a bit more.”

The deep-seated faith of Armenians is “not touched on in great detail by The Promise,” says Chris. “But it makes it obvious that Armenians are Christians, Turks are Muslim, and there is a clash of religions.”

“I think a big part of why it happened is because we were Christians and Armenians; it was clearly on faith grounds.

“It was a massive disaster for Armenians; and, not only for Armenians, it was a very sad moment for all of us humans. I think [those events] show the dark side of what we can become if we completely forget who we are and who we are created by. We are created by God and if we forget that, [the Armenian Genocide] shows what we can become.”

Given Chris has grown up in a culture that continues to be shaped by the events which The Promise touches on, what is it like for him to be an Armenian Christian? Chris shares that forgiveness is a defining characteristic of his people, while pointing out his personal identity is anchored in something much greater than national pride, tradition or experience.

“It’s important not to forget or ignore what happened but I’m very thankful to God that that’s not what defines me. I look at it as something tragic that has happened in our history and we can learn a lot from it. But also, and more so, when I look at the Armenian Genocide, I see the amazing stories of compassion that other nations have showed to Armenia. Also, some miraculous stories of some people who were saved. That’s another piece of evidence for me that even though things happen in life and you can’t eliminate bad things from happening around you, one thing that is constant for me is I know for sure nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Jesus Christ.”

“Not life nor death, or even if you think there is a distance between you and God, can separate you from his love. His love is eternal, his plans are great and his arms are open always.”

As he helps us better evaluate The Promise and reflects on his own faith and his nation’s history, it could be easy for Chris to dwell in anger or doubt about God’s love in Jesus Christ. But he hasn’t done that and continues not to.

“Another thing I have never dwelled in – and I think it’s the same for a lot of Armenians – is hate. The movie has showed that the Armenian response is not hate. In The Promise, Ana says sadly but proudly: ‘Our revenge will be to survive.’ So, it’s not ‘we will do the same as they did to us.’ It’s ‘we will survive and prove to them that nothing can extinguish Armenians. We believe God will always keep us here.’”

“The Turkish government wanted us wiped out. They thought they almost succeeded but I wish they could see Armenia now; it’s a thriving and successful country.

“I think about Armenia like it’s a ‘great comeback’ and it’s happened, I believe, because God was, is and always will be with us.”

Ben McEachen

https://www.insights...menian-genocide

Chris Cornell's song composed for "The Promise" - a film about the Armenian Genocide - has been nominated for the2017 Hollywood Music In Visual Media Awards.

Written and performed by Cornell, the piece servedas the ending credits song for the film.

Also nominated in the Original Son - Feature Film category are “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever” (Fifty Shades Darker) – Written by Taylor Swift, Sam Dew and Jack Antonoff. Performed by Zayn & Taylor Swift; “If I Dare” (Battle of the Sexes) Written by Sara Bareilles and Nicholas Britell. Performed by Sara Bareilles; “Mighty River” (Mudbound) Written by Mary J. Blige, Raphael Saadiq, and Taura Stinson. Performed by Mary J. Blige; “Stand Up For Something” (Marshall) Music by Diane Warren, Lyrics by Diane Warren and Lonnie R. Lynn. Performed by Andra Day, featuring Common; “This Is Me” (The Greatest Showman) Written by Benj Pasek & Justin Paul. Performed by Keala Settle.

Cornell cited a connection with "The Promise" through his Greek wife, whose family had been affected by the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian Genocide. This prompted his family to tour refugee camps in Greece, where they formed the Chris and Vicky Cornell Foundation, to help aid child refugees and the issues affecting them.

At the time of the song’s release, Cornell stated, “[The Promise] is mainly about paying homage to those we lost in the Armenian Genocide, but it’s also about shining a light on more recent atrocities.”

http://panarmenian.n...eng/news/248170