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Film and television reports are the basis for three screenings and discussions on the expectations of images of war, of their truth and authenticity. On February 18 the journalist and editor Maren Niemeyer presents her work on reporting for television from war zones. Christian Frei screens his documentary war photographer on February 27. The highly acclaimed film Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges by filmmaker and media artist Harun Farocki is shown and commented on by Hito Steyerl on March 12.
The term 'shock and awe' became a synonym for the American blitzkrieg strategy during the Iraq War: It stands for the resolute goal of intimidation during a large-scale military attack. A gigantic, controlling media apparatus was to present the world with a speedy victory with a technically clean and precisely led war. "Embedded journalists", a limited number of chosen reporters who accompanied the military on the front lines became a new facet of war reporting. The mistrust of images grows despite this real-time reporting, which is has been called real, pure journalism or historical television. Although many journalists feel a duty to truthfully document the events of war, the ability to depict war has become more questionable than ever before.
What does the »real« image of war look like? What do we expect the journalists, reporters and artists who make images to do in order for us to trust their images of war.
(Concept: Paula von Sydow)
Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges, 1988, 75'
Harun Farocki with commentary by Hito Steyerl
Friday, 12 March, 2004, 8 pm
Aerial photographs from 1944 show the concentration camp in Auschwitz. Spotters from the American airforce coincidentally photographed it while collecting data for the bombing of the IG-Farben plant in Monowitz. Decades later and with the knowledge of the post-war years, the commentary on the photos clarifies what the allies either could not or did not want to see: The gas chambers, the death wall and hundreds of people. The appropriation of the world through images and the disappropriation of human senses as well as the ability to describe these processes is the central subject of the film. In a transfer of historical and current strategies of war images their medial stereotypes and their »inscription of war« is uncovered.
Born in 1944 in Nový Jicin (Neutitschein), 1966-68 education at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB). After teaching in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Manila, Munich and Stuttgart he was a visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkley from 1993-1999. Farocki has made over 90 films including feature films, essays and documentaries. Numerous publications since 1966 and exhibitions since 1990. 1974-1984 editor and writer for the magazine Filmkritik (Munich).
»So the images show the truth - but not the 'whole' truth. They prove to be a Janus head construction, in which 'moments of truth' can be articulated. « Hito Steyerl, Dokumentarismus als Politik der Wahrheit, 2003.
The last works by the author Hito Steyerl were dedicated to the philosophical notion of the truth and described its meaning in the context of the current popularity of documentary strategies.
Steyerl lives in Berlin and studied feature and documentary film at the College of Visual Arts in Tokyo and at the Munich Academy for Television and Film in Munich. Steyerl has published filmic and written essays centered around questions of globalization, racism and postcolonial critique.
war photographer
documentary film, Switzerland 2001, 96'
Christian Frei
Friday, 27 February, 2004, 8 pm
»... and that is why photographers go there - to show them, to reach out and grab them and make them stop what they are doing and pay attention to what is going on - to create pictures powerful enough to overcome the diluting effects of the mass media and shake people out of their indifference - to protest and by the strength of that protest to make others protest.«
James Nachtwey, Why photograph war?, 1985
The Swiss writer, director and producer Christian Frei followed the war reporter James Nachtwey for two years through the war zones of Indonesia, Kosovo and Palestine. Nachtwey has earned a cult status in the world of war reporting and has »not missed a single war« in the last 20 years. He is considered the »bravest and best war photographer ever«. For his Oscar-nominated documentary Christian Frei mounted special micro-cameras onto James Nachtwey's camera to provide insight into the motivation, fears and the everyday life of the American photographer: »We see a famous photographer looking for the decisive moment. We hear every breath of the photographer. For the first time in the history of movies about photographers, this technique allowed an authentic insight into the work of a concerned photo-journalist.«
Christian Frei (www.war-photographer.com)
Born in 1959 in Switzerland, Frei studied visual media as part of his journalism and communication studies at the University of Freiburg in Germany. He was worked regularly for the Swiss television station SF DRS since 1984. war photographer has won numerous prizes.
Through Other Eyes
Maren Niemeyer
Wednesday, 18 February, 2004, 8 pm
Maren Niemeyer, executive director of LOLA, a show for women on the television station Arte, has first-hand experience in war reporting: During the Golf War in 1991, she worked for CNN in the USA and in 1999 she reported from Kosovo for Kulturreport on the German public station ARD. While screening her reports as both broadcast and uncut material, Niemeyer will speak on the limits of production - the hasty, often censored media images - and offer alternatives to such problems. Her report on the war photographer Anja Niedrighaus dedicates the question of whether »female war reporters make different images of war than their male colleagues and of whether men and women are different in their assessment of war.« This statement also addresses her own work.
Born in 1964 in Bremen, Niemeyer studied journalism and television in Paris and Berlin. She has worked as a journalist and writer since 1986 for the German television stations ARD, ZDF, PRO 7, PREMIERE and the German/French art station ARTE. In 1991 Maren Niemeyer spent several months in the USA as an Arthur F. Burns scholar.
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