Buckle up for dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, the acclaimed hijacking documentary that eerily foreshadowed 9-11. We meet the romantic skyjackers who fought their revolutions and won airtime on the passenger planes of the 1960’s. By the 1990s, such characters apparently are no more, replaced on our TV screens by stories of state-sponsored suitcase bombs. Director Johan Grimonprez investigates the politics behind this change, at the same time unwrapping our own complicity in the urge for ultimate disaster. Playing on Don DeLillo’s riff in the novel MAO II: ‘what terrorists gain, novelists lose’ and ‘home is a failed idea’, he blends archive hijackings with surreal and banal themes including fast food, pet statistics, disco and his quirky home movies. David Shea wrote the superb soundtrack to this roller coaster through history, best described in the words of one hijacked Pepsi executive as: “running the gamut of many emotions: from surprise to shock, to fear, to joy, to laughter and then again, fear.”
CREDITS
dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y
a film by Johan Grimonprez
1997, Belgium-France, digital betacam,
color & black/white, 68 min, stereo
excerpts
Mao II and White Noise by Don DeLillo
original music and sample collage by
David Shea
written and directed by
Johan Grimonprez
production
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, New Media Department, Paris; Kunstencentrum
STUK, Leuven
with the support of:
Documenta X, Kassel
Klapstuk 97, Leuven
Fundación Provincial de Cultura, Diputación de Cádiz
The Fascinating Faces of Flanders
Ministry of the Flemish Community
original language
English
translations
French, Dutch, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Galician
Excerpts from White Noise (Don DeLillo, 1984-1985) and Mao II (Don DeLillo, 1991) are used by permission of the author and the Wallace Literary Agency Inc.
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