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

Copyright artist(s) and courtesy argos

Artist(s)

Year

1997

Duration

01:08:00

Original format

Betacam SP

Color

col.

Color system

PAL

Languages

Spoken: English US
Subtitles: German , French , Galician , Dutch; Flemish , Japanese , Portuguese , Spanish; Castilian

Availability

Distribution
Collection

The guideline in Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y is the unofficial chronicle of world-wide aeroplane hijacking. Its blending of archival footage and personal home movie imagery sets out to investigate the media politics of our contemporary catastrophe culture. For this pseudo-documentary fully demonstrates how the spectacle of international terrorism and the desire for the ultimate disasters invade the living room to threaten our domestic bliss. Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y’s narrative is inspired by two Don DeLillo novels — White Noise and Mao II. Savouring the writer’s motto “Home is a failed idea”, Johan Grimonprez takes 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. New York composer-musician David Shea wrote the original soundtrack to this accelerated journey through the explosive history of the 20th century.