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Peyman Rafii,
Germany, 1984,
25 min
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The narrator summarizes it right at the
start : "Watch these pictures very
attentively". An Iranian army truck is ambushed by
members of the Kurdish resistance in the middle of
Iranian Kurdistan. The operation takes barely 5 minutes,
and the result is : 17 dead on the enemy side and a pile
of weapons captured. The pictures in this perfectly
ordinary, actually banal documentary do indeed deserve to
be watched attentively, even if it is only because we
seldom get to see them. Ordinary pictures of the ordinary
activities of farmers, doctors, nurses, village
dignitaries, housewives, but all during a period of
regular bombardment and an economic boycott of the
Khomeini regime. This is front-line film-making : the
viewer is not only witness to the incident already
mentioned, but also to a strategically executed attack on
an army camp. More real than real (despite the bombastic
use of a dramatic soundtrack), particularly because along
the way these pictures make us aware of the facts : this
war is being fought with Kalashnikovs, stencilled
pamphlets, amateur radio links and field telephones, in
short : with old media. Perhaps that is why it is
not given any space in the actual media. |