Video

Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y

Johan Grimonprez

1997, 68:00 minutes, colour/B&W

TAPECODE 101.01

Buckle up for the unofficial chronicle of worldwide airplane hijacking! This pseudo-documentary will take you on a playful subversive tour from the romantic hijacker revolutionary of the sixties and seventies to the cynical, anonymous parcel bombs of the nineties. Its blending of archival footage and personal home movie imagery investigates the media politics of contemporary catastrophe culture. Inspired by two Don DeLillo novels - White Noise and Mao II, and savouring the writer's motto "Home is a failed idea," director Johan Grimonprez fully demonstrates how the spectacle of international terrorism and the desire for the ultimate disaster invade all living rooms to threaten our domestic bliss. New York composer musician David Shea wrote the original soundscape to this accelerated journey through the explosive history of this century.

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Critical Writing

AVENUE Questions and Artists: DRAWING ENEMY LINES
by Leah Sandals. National Post, Jan. 17, 2008.
Violent signals: Inspired by war in the age of terror, this...
by Jade Colbert. The Varsity, Jan. 17, 2008.
Pumping up the Volume of Art: Inspired by war in the age of...
by Blake Gopnik. The Globe and Mail, Aug. 19, 1999.
dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y
by Wilson Lee. Lola, Winter 1999, no. 5.
High-concept filmmaking on a low budget
by Robert Everett-Green. The Globe and Mail, Apr. 24, 1998.
Art of the Moment, Here to Stay
by Roberta Smith. The New York Times, Feb. 15, 1998.
Letting Go: the fall in contemporary art
by Jan Allen. C Magazine, 1998.