Paradiso, XXXI, 108

In this striking experimental short film, Palestinian filmmaker — and true image archaeologist — Kamal Aljafari unearths triumphalist archives of Israeli military propaganda dating back more than fifty years to compose a scathing parable.

Before our eyes, tanks and cannons shot in fish-eye unfurl, strategic calculations and sophisticated technological devices follow one after another — all choreographed to the simultaneously haunting and burlesque rhythm of Camille Saint-Saëns’ Danse macabre. This performative staging gives these military exercises the air of a satirical sketch worthy of Monty Python, evoking the image of slightly ridiculous overgrown children playing at war in their oversized backyard, collectively fantasizing an imaginary enemy.

For these “virile Olympics” take place without ever showing the opponent: everything here centers on the ostentatious display of the attacker’s power, as if the sole purpose of this armed deployment were to celebrate the destructive force inhabiting these men. By concealing the possible victims of these military operations, these archives lay bare the very essence of the war apparatus: dehumanization — the true weapon of mass destruction.

Through this gesture, both aesthetic and political, Kamal Aljafari repurposes these archival images into a powerful anti-war treatise, plunging us into the vertigo of a world ultimately playing at its own disappearance.

Jason Burnham
Tënk editorial manager