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

By itself, on its own terms, this is amazingly powerful. It's 100% found footage with a few scripted voice-overs. Generally, the observations of the filmmaker are banal, as offensively thin as what we hear from the people documented. But the cinematic composition, the simple exposure to the reality overwhelms all this silliness and becomes pretty profound.

Of course we never see real reality, merely the reality in films of reality. So this is a third generation or four-folded report.

But what it reports is such a powerful story, that it completely reregisters us, and would have when this film was made. But this becomes much more powerful since 9-11.

Its because we have somehow redefined terrorism in terms of Muslim nutjobs and their American Army opponents. This reminds us that terrorism has been with us for some time, and its justification. Moreover, terrorism via airplanes was an entrenched part of the world long before Muwahhidun unimaginatively appropriated it.

The overt foundation of this is that terrorism and art are opposed, that terror steals the story. The making of this film, therefore is a sort of war to wrest it back, along the lines that so-called Christian films about battling the devil are themselves considered part of that battle.

It works, in spite of its own story.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

While clearly this is visually captivating, there is an unpleasant sense that we're being taken on a tour of YouTube clips of death and loss, rather than being given any proper analysis of events, or even a decent exposition on the supposed theme of this film.

I get that this was made as an art installation, and that it's not always necessary for a documentary to be a huge political and sociological examination of events, but this doesn't even succeed on the terms which it itself establishes. Juxtaposing the footage of terrorist incidents with other news reels and random moments from TV, interspersed with monologues and discussions from a book (I think), it still seems to be trying to make a point, perhaps about the way we view such incidents as just one of the outputs from our modern media, but it lacks any coherence in the way this is done, and fails to deliver on it's own objectives.

The exploitative nature of the film is brought sharply into focus when we're shown footage of fatal plane crashes that have absolutely no connection to hijacking or terrorism. Whatever other arguments it may want to make are destroyed by these random inclusions. It lacks credibility. It's little more than a version of 'Faces of Death'.

Just an odd, odd flick, a montage of images and sound bites from international hostage and terrorist attacks, mainly from the 60's through the early 80's...there's some point being made about the medias coverage of such acts of terror turning us all into apolitical carnage-seeking voyeurs...but it's all pretty scattershot as far as a coherent message, but it has a dark humor in it's presentation of these harrowing events, ending with a string of slo-mo footage of airliners crashing, all to the strains of that 70's disco anthem, The Hustle...after the end credits are done, the last shot says all there is to say about this film makers wicked (or, sick) sense of humor.

I saw this film in the Tate in Liverpool (yes the art Gallery), and unlike most of the audiences for Films in Art Galleries, we stayed for the entire duration of the film, admittedly as it run on a loop, we saw the last 5 mins and the credits twice.

Anyway, as far as I know, it was the first time that Hayle had exposed herself to something like this, it's a film which will leave you phased, you loose faith in all mankind, then slowly as you realise you need to just get on with your life, and the lost feeling fades away.

But at least she will be more ready for it the next time it hits, but sometimes it's enough for you to loose the will to live.

I on the other hand already knew that there was no empathy in politics (or at least on the high level at which the film was aimed), and wasn't all that phased.

Ultimately, if you've got some hours to kill, see if there are any films showing inside the art gallery (if there is one), it's not all meaningless brush work on the walls.