## Unit 1 - (Post) Post-Cold-War ### Class Films [Good Bye, Lenin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Bye,_Lenin!) (German, 2003) [In the Heat of the Sun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Heat_of_the_Sun) (Chinese, 1994) [Underground](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_\(1995_film\)) (Serbian, 1995) ### Individual Films [Leviathan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_\(2014_film\)) (Russian, 2014) [Khadak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khadak_\(2006_film\)) ( [Peter Brosens](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peter_Brosens&action=edit&redlink=1) and [Jessica Woodworth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Woodworth), German/Mongolian, 2006) [Sweet Mud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Mud) ([Dror Shaul](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dror_Shaul), Israel, 2006) [Cold War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War_\(2018_film\)) ([Paweł Pawlikowski](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawe%C5%82_Pawlikowski), Poland, 2018) [California Dreamin'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Dreamin%27_\(endless\)) ([Cristian Nemescu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristian_Nemescu), Romania, 2007) ### The Desert Will Always Win  https://youtu.be/zYyWrawFjus?si=icZpolrLnfknr8_x #### Cold War as Simulation Describing the Cold War as a simulation is not to dismiss the importance of its impacts. The cold war may be seen as a colonialist conflict between Sino-Soviet-American superpowers with its most significant environmental, economic, and sociological damages imposed upon colonial states in the global south. From this perspective, the conflict was not primarily an economic competition between centrally planned command economies, versus market-driven economies; or an ideological or sociological competition between authoritarian regimes and liberal democracies; but a simulation of these conflicts used to redraw the literal and figurative map, and enforce them on colonial and post-colonial societies. In his 10/7/01 essay, *Reflections on WTC*, Zizek cites Badiou's assertion that the twentieth century has been uniquely focused on the project of mediating the intensities of lived reality---in its most extreme forms--- invariably producing “a product deprived of its substance” (“Zizek/Reflections on WTC”, p. 2) Zizek here draws on The Wachowski's references to Baudrillard's reversal of Borges' vision of "tattered ruins" of a map “inhabited by Animals and Beggars”. (Borges, 1999, p. 1) Baudrillard insists that the impossible map has replaced reality altogether, and in this configuration, *we* are the animals and beggars, “in the deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own.” (Baudrillard, 1998, p. 1) From this perspective, our dependency on mediated reality is absolute, even while the coherence of reality itself is no longer dependable. The truth of this evades simple moralizing even if there is a tendency to approach it with alarm. As Baudrillard attempts to (re)assure us: “there cannot be a real catastrophe because we live under the sign of virtual catastrophe.” (Baudrillard, 1993, p. 26) Or as Deleuze and Guattari put it, we make ourselves safe in the refrain: “This is the postromantic turning point: the essential thing is no longer forms and matters, or themes, but forces, densities, intensities.” (Deleuze, 1987, p. 343) We see these intensities reproduced by simulations in films from this unit in a variety of ways. #### Simulation as Control In *Underground*, Marko says (1:27:23) "The truth? ...No text, my dear, has any truth in it. The truth exists only in real life. You are the truth. You. You are supposed to be the truth. There is no truth, only your conviction... art is a Lie." Meanwhile, Marko has been distorting time and simulating an ongoing war to keep his brother, best friend, and symbolically, his nation, oppressed by their fear of oppression *"The Aggressor is attacking again."* The Tank in the cellar (1:14:54) is a visual representation of the nested dolls of safety in a security and surveillance state. the monochromatic and cluttered mise en scene of the cellar, already claustrophobic, but for increased security, the offensive weapon, a tank, is transformed into a shelter within the shelter. The impossibility of fitting all of the cellar citizens inside evokes the absurdity of their situation. #### Simulation as Security: In *Good Bye, Lenin* Alex struggles to mediate reality for his mother, Christiane, in the same way that a loving parent mediates for a child, by offering as much of the truth as they believe will afford a sense of security, familiarity, and understanding, while constructing a virtuality not divorced from truth, but where the edges have been softened. In the final hospital scene (1:51:23), Alex is no longer wearing the bright hopeful blue of his youth, or the intense red of socialist ideological intensity, but a muted plaid containing both. The blurred edges of the TV both compress the space between Alex and Christiane, and remind us of the powerful place media holds in their lives, and Alex's efforts to soften the hard facts of the "real" However, it is not until Christiane understands Alex's role in constructing this map that we realize her commitment to socialist ideology is less important to her than her commitment to the ideals of humanism and love, ideals that alex demonstrates in his media intervention. #### "'now' has no meaning here," ... "Then 'here' has no meaning either." *"where am i?"* *"Not 'where'. 'When' is what you must ask."* Khadak (2006) is a mystically coded meditation on the social, spiritual, economic, and environmental challenges facing traditional Mongolian society. Koutsourakis effectively argues that the depiction is intended to interrogate the expectation of linearity in temporal relationships, “the boundaries between past and present are somehow obscured and the film’s aesthetic slowness intensifies this effect.” (Koutsourakis, 2017, p. 307) and offer a collectivist counter-history to the racist/colonialist appropriation both of universalized capitalism, and of Sino-Soviet command economy. “Such a complex depiction of time is not to be understood under the rubric of fatalistic repetitions, but as a means of identifying how our historical present is still marked by oppressive structures from the past, as well as by revolutionary failures and energies that can be reclaimed and transformed.” (Koutsourakis, 2017, p. 308) *"there was a time when man took too much. the desert moved, extinguishing life."* Like Marko in Underground, troops disrupt the agronomic life of Bagi and his family of herders with a simulated livestock plague, forcibly relocating them "where there is work" in a mining colony. From this perspective, the Mongolian people are faring no better under the exploitation by the economic forces of modern western capitalism, than they were under the exploitation of the Soviet Empire. Their experience under either regime is alterity, producing resources for a global power. **Their only hope is to reclaim the power to redraw their maps for themselves.** ![[Pasted image 20251009005944.png]] The inversion of the tree in Bagi's vision (from 1:16:45-- 1:17:35) illustrates this possibility, of reconsidering the familiar, where branches reaching for the eternal blue sky viewed differently may also be understood to be roots, anchoring the community in the dreams of their ancestors. This is a vision of liberation through understanding, vast and unconstrained; in contrast with the cramped conditions of the bomb shelter in underground, or the warm institutional/domestic environment in the hospital. #### "The desert will always win." This kind of circular temporality rejects the teleology of both Fukuyama's "end of history" and Marx's Communist Society as the inevitable culmination of class struggle; offering instead to reframe history as an ever-present origin of emergence and collapse of localized consciousness. In such a system, media serves as mythopoeic transmission, not of ideology, but of conscious awareness, either stimulating, or stultifying individual consciousness. "you may get lost. Don't be afraid... the sky is watching you" --- #### References Baudrillard, Jean. “Jean Baudrillard. Simulacra and Simulations.” _Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings_, 1998. Baudrillard, Jean. _The Transparency of Evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena_. Verso, 1993. Borges, Jorge Luis. _Collected Fictions_. With Andrew Hurley. Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition. Penguin Books, 1999. Deleuze, Gilles. _A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia_. With Félix Guattari and Brian Massumi. University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Koutsourakis, Angelos. “Visualizing the Anthropocene Dialectically: Jessica Woodworth and Peter Brosens’ Eco-Crisis Trilogy.” _Film-Philosophy_ 21, no. 3 (2017): 299–325. [https://doi.org/10.3366/film.2017.0053](https://doi.org/10.3366/film.2017.0053). “Zizek/Reflections on WTC.” Accessed October 9, 2025. [https://www.lacan.com/reflections.htm](https://www.lacan.com/reflections.htm). --- ### Film 1: Good Bye, Lenin Setting aside the finer point I would prefer to make, that the GDR hasn't "become" a media construction, but like all identarian states, was only ever primarily that---Enns is suggesting that media reproductions of the past inevitably construct a simulacrum, a necessarily novel imagining of the past. This new 'media construction' then offers various modes of engagement with both the past and the present, but are essentially distinct from the modes of engagement that were available in the actual past. These modes can range from uncritical "unreflected" nostalgia---to nostalgia that affords critical distance from the present---to a "reflective" nostalgia that offers the opportunity to re-engage with the past while maintaining newly developed critical awareness. In the diagetic world of _Good Bye, Lenin_ this process of media constructing reality is demonstrated in many ways, being a key theme of the film. From the label on a pickle jar transforming Dutch pickles into Spreewaldgurken (1:18) to a false newscast transforming Coca Cola into a socialist invention (1:06), the frequent competition to construct and reconstruct competing realities is highlighted. A key example is when a fuzzy lamp, western marketing, and the appearance of western cars (1:22) transforms the Karl-Marx-Allee into an alien landscape, but a simulated newscast (1:24) restores the terrifying vision back into a more familiar world, albeit altered by a surprising social project. Importantly to the article, only in the final news broadcast, which reframes unification as a triumph of the GDR (1:50) is Christiane allowed the possibility of "reflective" nostalgia, after Lara provides the necessary critical awareness for Christiane to consider this new Germany to be a product of Alex's care and social conscience.  Stepping beyond the diagesis of the film, _Good Bye, Lenin_ itself (as a media object) functions to reconstruct the GDR in a blended form of nostalgia. The first six minutes of the film, are a combination of file footage and reenacted family memories. The memories use a particular color palette with saturated blues possibly suggesting hopefulness, (see the Rocket ship scene at 5:26) up until about 8 minutes when the movie's prologue transitions to October 1989. From here, Red becomes a dominant color, representing the oppressive regime and possibly the growing conflict in the GDR. Even the household scenes have a strong tint and desaturated color. Alex still often wears denim, and Lara wears a blue smock. This shifts again when the wall comes down and Yellow begins to appear more prominently (note the color of burger king uniform and label @19:24, and Ariane's Yellow coat 31:40), seemingly a representation of encroaching capitalism. After the Kubrick homage in setting up Christiane's bedroom at 35 minutes, a more generally balanced palette emerges, culminating in the very balanced colors of the outdoor scene at their dachau (1:30). The rest of the film has a dominant tint of subdued blue with a few bright pops of color, framing the current state of the post unification East as, like Alex, still hopeful, but also wiser after experiences following the exuberance of the initial reunification. --- ### Film 2: In the Heat of the Sun Braester effectively makes the case for a political reading of "In the Heat of the Sun" where the narrators unreliability is framed as an act of resistance. In this approach the indifference to an "objective" history is a mode of detached irony _intended_ to destabilize the typical Maoist mythical narrative which is "...more lofty, more intense... more ideal than daily life. (braester, 197)  I will just try to extend Braester's reading of the film by suggesting the value of incorporating a more subjective, neuropsychological reading, where the unreliable structuring of personal autobiographical events may also undermine the tone of nostalgia by accurately depicting neuropsychological effects of chronic childhood stress. [Numerous](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-52733-4) [studies](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3513357/) have shown that acute and chronic stress can profoundly change the brain's modes of memory-making, potentially resulting in omission, distortions, and confusion. I would pursue the possibility that there are two forms of narrative instability occurring in _In the Heat of the Sun_. First, those that take the form of imaginative (mythmaking) rehearsal---the kind that Ma Xiaojun engages within the film in the mirror (@ 0:44), and is paralleled by Ma Xiaojun's chimney-climb (1:25), knife in the teeth aquatic rescue of Milan at the pool (1:54), and the birthday party scene that Braester analyzes (2:02). These do effect the subversion of Maoist mythmaking, where revision of history becomes fabulation, by the narrator calling attention to these episodes' inaccuracy and metanarrative goals. But another mechanism may be at play in the chronological confusion of a few things like Ma Xiaojun's flight from Milan's grandmother, which he denies during an early meeting (1:11) but is eventually portrayed much later in the film (1:46), the object instability that occurs with the various incarnations of the red swimming suit throughout the film, Ma Xiaojun's blended relationships with Milan and Yu Beipei, and other matters. These shifting contradictions do not clearly contribute to the mythologizing of Ma Xiaojun. They might however, be read as the neuropsychological effects of repressed chronic stress or childhood trauma. Through this lens, the instability of the film is not only ironic distance or political resistance, but also an accurate depiction of the psychic costs of the revolution---autobiographical distortions and overgeneral memory resulting from the chronic stress and trauma of familial dissolution, weak community bonds, and the lack of mature role models in the young boys' lives.  [Overgeneral memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overgeneral_autobiographical_memory) (OGM) is a condition where individuals struggle with individual autobiographical recollections, and tend to recall "general memories... such as repeated events or events occurring over broad periods." OGM is correlated with a variety of mental health issues, including, depression and PTSD. This could be a mechanism for interrogating the eternal summer depicted in the film. This dual reading avoids reducing the personal aspects of the film to a political allegory, just as Braester lauds Jiang's resistance to "Orwellizing" the Cultural Revolution (p199); and it contributes an additional argument for rejecting Barme' et. al claims of "Totalitarian nostalgia" (200). Realizing I didn't address the visual aspects, emerging from the chimney, ma xiajun resembles sun wukong the Chinese monkey god with superhuman powers. Swimming with the knife, resembles many film depictions of amphibious assault commandos, and in the birthday dinner, of course, time reverses. --- ### Film 3: Underground 1994 #### I. (2:22:10) At the opening of part III - War , after a quick fade up from the title card, Ivan is seen in 1992, Berlin, presumably having travelled via the underground from Belgrade in search of Soni. A tracking crane shot slowly pushes in to Ivan, halfway up a large conifer. lit from behind by the cold light of the morning sun. a light dusting of snow covers the grounds of what appears to be an large institutional building, where patients and staff, indicated by the bathrobes and white uniforms, are strolling. Seen from below, Ivan, in a green courdoroy gown loosely tied around his clothes, gazes west, clutching a broken branch from the tree. He has aged considerably since we last saw him, now with thinned grayed hair and moustache. His blank expression and thousand yard stare appear to be the face of someone who has seen too much. "Officially, he is dead." says one doctor in voiceover, "On the contrary... he looks good" replies a colleague. To the audience it is clear, Ivan does *not* look good. Ivan looks like he realizes that he has been profoundly exploited and sacrificed too much for the false story he believed in the basement. To modern audiences it appears he might be aware that he survived the 1941 Nazi bombing of Belgrade, the 1944 Allied Forces bombing of Belgrade, and is now seeing the future, the impending 1999 NATO bombing of Belgrade. Or perhaps in his semi-catatonic state he is merely free from his history altogether. ![[underground1.png.png]] #### II. (2:11:06) On the Danube, in a small rowboat, Blacky holds a glass liquor bottle before him like a charm. The sun glints from it briefly before crossing Jovan's upturned, confused face. The warm light of the rising sun crosses the frame from left to right, drawing our attention to the clutched rifle, made in the cramped, dimly light conditions of the cellar, and Blacky's other magical totem, a belt of ammunition crossing his chest. Soon the brilliance of the open world overwhelms Jovan and he begins to turn away from the sun. The boat rocks as the two men enjoy the peaceful world, still holding their magical defenses, but their history of conflict forgotten for the moment. "How Beautiful this world is. Congratulations." ![[underground2.png.png]] #### III (19:59) In a crowded apartment in Belgrade, Marko and Elena? lean in to a radio, listening to the Gestapo's reports on Marko and Blacky's latest caper, a train robbery of arms and munitions. Elena appears to be in the cage with the rabbits. Is it her fear? or her fertility that leaves her trapped? On the left side of the crowded frame, Marko is warmly shining beneath a perfect fedora. When he hears his name over the radio his response is unclear, is he proud to be recognized? "Nothing. Last night, we roughed up a few thieves." Who is a thief who steals from robbers? Here we see history is written by those who control the radio transmitter. To resist this history is a kind of freedom. This is the real underground. ![[underground3.png.png]] --- ## Unit 2- Human Rights ### Class [The Teacher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Teacher_\(2023_film\)) ([Farah Nabulsi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farah_Nabulsi), UK/Qatar/Palestine, 2023) [From Ground Zero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Ground_Zero) (Multiple/[Rashid Masharawi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid_Masharawi), Palestine/Gaza, 2024) [Sorry, Cinema (short), Charm (short)] [Donbass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donbass_\(film\)) ([Sergei Loznitsa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Loznitsa), Ukraine, 2018) [Servant of the People](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_of_the_People_\(2015_TV_series\)) ([Volodymyr Zelenskyy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volodymyr_Zelenskyy), Ukraine, 2015) [The Act of Killing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Act_of_Killing) ([Joshua Oppenheimer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Oppenheimer), Indonesia, 2012) ### Individual [Bamako](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamako_\(film\)) ([Abderrahmane Sissako](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abderrahmane_Sissako), Mali., 2006) [Wadjda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadjda) ( [Haifaa al-Mansour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haifaa_al-Mansour), Saudi Arabia, 2012) [Rafiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafiki_\(film\)) ([Wanuri Kahiu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanuri_Kahiu), Kenya, 2018) [Crossing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_\(2024_film\)) ([Levan Akin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levan_Akin), Multiple/Turkey/Georgia, 2024) [Holy Spider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Spider) ( [Ali Abbasi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Abbasi_\(director\)), Iran, 2022) ### Human Rights and the Liberatory Burden of Bearing Witness #### Response Ethics > “...subjectivity, is not autonomous and self contained within an individual but rather develops through relationships with others. Subjectivity is inherently intersubjective” (Oliver, 2015, p. 474) Reviewing the *Universal Declaration of Human Rights* (UDHR), the thirty articles seem at once, elementary, obvious, inevitable, yet ambitious, and lifetimes from realization. While dignity, liberty, and equality are declared as universal legal rights, the racial, sexual, and social-political legacies of colonialism still dehumanize and control people. When a marginalized group is deprived of personhood, they lose their access to legal protection along with their inconvenient claims to economic, political, and spiritual freedom. Even after de jure frameworks of colonial subjection are ended, the inheritance of trauma persists, and may spontaneously irrupt in opportunistic racism, sexism and violence. From this perspective, human rights is better approached as an ongoing relational process, not a legal framework or teleological goal. When grappling with the ethical demands of reconciling the inhumanity of oppression with the humanity of the oppressors, Kelly Oliver asks: “Intellectual recognition of suffering, vulnerability, and mortality, while perhaps necessary, is not sufficient. There has to be something that pulls us outside of ourselves and toward another. What is it that makes us act on the suffering of others once we’ve recognized it? What transforms recognition into compassion?"(Oliver, 2015, p. 482) She finds her answer building on the relational work of Emmanuel Levinas, moving beyond Hegel's idea of recognition as mutual acknowledgement: “The double meaning of witnessing—eyewitness testimony based on firsthand knowledge, on the one hand, and bearing witness to something beyond recognition that can’t be seen, on the other is the heart of subjectivity.” (Oliver, 2015, p. 483). Oliver refers to this approach as **response ethics.** Put another way, response ethics is the construction of peace through an intersubjective practice of bearing witness, both in the sense of providing the factual observations of a spectator, but also being moved by an affective obligation to respond to subjective injustice. Where spectation is observation, **bearing witness is the the active practice of testifying to the dehumanization of others**. To "bear" witness is not only to bring and offer a factual account of first-hand experience but to accept the burdens of "response-ability" that comes with believing the subjective truth of suffering. (Oliver, 2015, p. 483) The idea that human rights are formed by the response ethics of bearing witness explains the value of resources like Yale's *Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies*, *Shoah*, and the testimonies in *Jenin Jenin,* providing opportunities to "work through" trauma with mediated immediacy---mediated by film, mediated by memory, mediated by affect, mediated by the face of the other. Three of the assigned films, *Crossing*, *The Teacher*, and *The Act of Killing*, depict response ethics, specifically how the choice between reproducing and resisting oppression often occurs in **intergenerational relationships**. #### Intergenerational Transmission > “Yes, I want to sing to this burning day. I do want to sing... I want a language that I can lean on and that can lean on me, that asks me to bear witness and that I can ask to bear witness, to what power there is in us to overcome this cosmic isolation.” (Darwīsh, 2013, p. 59) While it is commonly conceived that older generations "vertically" transmit cultural values and colonial attitudes to younger generations, these films depict the transmissions passing bidirectionally between generations and demonstrate a wide variety of discursive dynamics and potential outcomes. Younger individuals may influence their older relations by bearing witness to the injustices they have inherited, and by exposing them to new, more progressive ideas. Older individuals with experience living in the marginalized roles afforded in the colonial state, may also transmit their witness in a counter-narrative resistant to the dominant narratives. #### *Crossing* (Levan Akin, 2024) In *Crossing* ('Peresechenie', 2024) Levan Akin depicts a mature Georgian woman's encounter with the precarity and desperation of a younger generation, reshaping her attitudes and understanding of trans women's and sex worker's experiences in Georgia and Istanbul. While bearing witness often depends on the power of language, Crossing depicts the power of careful observation as a form of witness. Much of the film depicts the silent Lia vigilantly studying her surroundings. Silence is a rule she lays out for her travelling companion, Achi early in the relationship. Despite language barriers, Lia recognizes the familiar effects of precarity and trauma on Achi and on the trans women they encounter. She appears to be repeatedly moved by Achi's food insecurity, as he compulsively wolfs down anything he can find to eat, but is invested enough in Lia to save pastries for her. Leading up to a key scene (54:00--55:00), Lia has been shown navigating the unfamiliar streets of Istanbul on her own, walking, sitting, eating in silence, setting up her sense of isolation and desire for connection, for the pivotal encounter with the "other". In this case the other is represented by a small household of trans women, Gulsen, Aynur, and their unnamed, younger, third roommate. The intimacy of the scene is constructed through tight framing of the women, the drab interior, and perhaps Lia feels familiar with the emphasis on wigs, costume and a vanity mirror. After giving up on trying to communicate through shared language, Aynur reaches out to connect with Lia, relying on the power of song. Lia gazes at the roommate who appears to remind her of Tekla. This interaction seems crucial to shifting Lia's conception of the subject position of trans women, and unlocks her genuine longing (response-ability) to find and connect with Tekla. Akin is clear in an interview on the relational aspect of his intentions when making the film “It's very much conversations that I want to have or have had or, you know, wish what happened between people.” (“Director Levan Akin on his new movie 'Crossing'”, 2024, p. 2) ![[Pasted image 20251027235758.png]] ![[Pasted image 20251027235852.png]] ![[Pasted image 20251027235933.png]] #### _The Teacher_ (Farah Nabulsi, 2023) > “Witnessing or response ethics maintains that even in the face of our lack of understanding, the impossibility of mastery, and inherent unpredictability, we have a responsibility to act in ways that open up the possibility of response from our fellow earthlings and from the earth itself.” (Oliver, 2015, p. 490) ![[Pasted image 20251027215252.png]] In *The Teacher*, Basem, is an older mentor to Adam, a young Palestinian student. Basem advocates for, witnesses to, and demonstrates the complexity of a humanist counter-narrative sufficient to encompass the dehumanizing violence and oppressive injustice of Israeli settlers in the West Bank while still maintaining hope. Over the course of the film, this counter-narrative resists the allure of retaliatory violence against the occupiers in pursuit of a sustainable justice built on the power of witness as framed by Oliver. In a crucial scene (26:18--30:20) after Adam is unable to bear the lawyer's witness of her uncertainty that the court will bring criminal charges, Adam is shown reflectively contemplating an olive sprig, a traditional symbol of supplication for divine intervention, but also a potent symbol of his brother's recent murder at the hands of an Israeli settler. He is seated on a couch, pulled from the ruins of his home, visible behind him. On a table are a broken teacup, a wooden carving of a horse (carved by Basem's son, another victim of the occupation) and the binoculars that led his brother to attempt to defend his family's olive trees. Basem sits with Adam and recounts a story from his own past---a recollection from his childhood of his mother's encounter with an abusive settler during the olive harvest. After his mother had endured all the abuse she could without reacting, finally Basem could see "...all the fury of the world in my mother's eyes..." and finally his mother struck the settler. Seeing the vicarious pleasure in Adam's face, Basem continues the story through it's inevitable retaliation, but then to it's surprising conclusion: "the soldier let my mother go... in the end, the soldier listened to the activist, and let my mother go... Have some hope and hold on to it." When Adam directly questions the truth of this witness' call for hope, Basem's struggle to maintain that hope is heartbreakingly clear. But ultimately it is the sincerity of Basem's struggle against an impossible challenge that communicates the essential topology of the underlying reality of their shared situation to Adam. Although both men have lost those most precious to them, in this moment, as long as they refuse to concede, neither man is alone. “This attempt to think the impossible, to articulate the impossible, may be the very condition of possibility for ethics.” (Oliver, 2015, p. 487) ![[Pasted image 20251027215404.png]] #### _The Act of Killing_ (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012) > “The Arabic root meaning “bearing witness,” shahida, also produces “gravestone” or “epitaph,” sha:hid, and “martyr,” shahi:d—words that echo throughout the work. Here, writing is history’s witness, its epitaph: both sha:hid.” (Darwīsh, 2013, p. 21) In *The Act of Killing*, Anwar Congo attempts the vertical transmission of an anticommunist ideology which justifies genocidal atrocity, but a younger generation filmmaker disrupts the process by luring Congo into a scenario that solicits his empathy and forces him to engage a recognition of his victims' humanity. Almost the entire film is one endurance event, bearing witness to the subject positions recounted by the inheritors of violence, perpetrated on behalf of Suharto's regime's exploitation of postcolonial power structures. For better or worse, the film allows Anwar Congo the undeserved privilege of sharing his witness almost uninterrupted. Oppenheimer is clear about this: “I had to keep my eyes open in order to allow him to go through all this and just be with him on that journey, as a support, certainly, but more importantly, as a witness. That’s how I felt more and more towards the end of making it and how one should feel towards the end of the movie.” (Sara Kendall, 2017, p. 23) But in one scene (56:39--59:40) Anwar's neighbor, Suryono offers his own eyewitness account as a subject of violence. "But if you want a true story, I have one." ![[Pasted image 20251027225427.png]] After recounting his horrific childhood experience of the disappearance, murder, and burial of his Chinese stepfather, chuckling as he recalls his own exile to a "shantytown", and saying "Why should i hide this from you? We should get to know each other, right?" The camera cuts back and forth between Suryono and Anwar's attention, and Herman's studious inattention, adjusting his dancer's costume. When he is unable to further bear Suryono's witness, Herman interrupts: "Look, everything's already been planned." With this, the testimony ends, giving way to various forms of resistance from the main subjects of the film and ultimately Suryono's witness goes unrecognized for "practical" reasons ostensibly related to the logistics of the film, "...your story is too complicated. it would take days to shoot." But as the scene continues (through 1:07) Suryono endures his total isolation as the cohort of torturers reenact a brutal scene of deeply unsettling sadism. ![[Pasted image 20251027230137.png]] #### Human Rights are a form of relationship As portrayed by these films, the universal recognition of human status is a necessary precondition for realizing universal human rights. This process of mutual recognition is a complex and demanding negotiation which starts with exposure, demands persistence, vulnerability, mutual empathy, and *may* eventually produce acceptance and affirmation of the essential humanity in every person. While a framework like the UDHR may establish a legal definition of Human Rights, the relational networks that realize its ideal, a universal recognition of humanity, are the fragile, intimate, and demanding connections formed between the inheritors and the subjects of violence by sharing and listening, and all parties commitment to bearing the weight of the truth that is revealed. The site of redemption is a site of cultivation, not conflict. #### References Darwīsh, Maḥmūd. _Memory for Forgetfulness: August, Beirut, 1982_. With Ibrahim Muhawi. Literature of the Middle East. University of California Press, 2013. [https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520954595](https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520954595). “Director Levan Akin on His New Movie ‘Crossing.’” _Weekend Edition Sunday_ (Washington, D.C., United States), NPR, July 21, 2024. [https://www.proquest.com/docview/3082962575/citation/10FE3FEAB8A54157PQ/1](https://www.proquest.com/docview/3082962575/citation/10FE3FEAB8A54157PQ/1). Nations, United. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” United Nations, United Nations. Accessed October 27, 2025. [https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights](https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights). Oliver, Kelly. “Witnessing, Recognition, and Response Ethics.” _Philosophy & Rhetoric_ 48, no. 4 (2015): 473–93. [https://doi.org/10.5325/philrhet.48.4.0473](https://doi.org/10.5325/philrhet.48.4.0473). Sara Kendall. “Unsettling Redemption: The Ethics of Intrasubjectivity in The Act of Killing.” _MediaTropes_ 6, no. 2 (2017): 20–44. --- ### The Teacher (2023)  ### I (0:17:03) ![[Pasted image 20251014070012.png]] Seated in front of several full bookcases in a high backed armchair, Basem explains the destruction of Adam's home to Lisa, saying that "most of the houses in the village have demolition orders, including mine." Soft fabric drapes, the loose woven chair, rumpled clothes give an impression of comfort. Remains from their delicious meal and a newspaper cover the table, Basem has to move his jeans to sit, the books are leaning on each other, he lives in peace, but perhaps dissipation, perhaps acceptance, perhaps resignation. But the warm light, motivated by a reading lamp shows this is the center of Basem's world. When Lisa cant "get my head around" the events, Basem finds a book on political theory. When she asks for something lighter to go with it, he offers: "...a moon will rise from my darkness...". (what is the block of wood?) ### II (1:03:24) ![[Pasted image 20251014071706.png]] When we return to almost the same framing of the room about 45 minutes later, the cold light of day shines on the disarray left by soldiers searching his house. Basem's books are scattered, the lamp is falling over, the couch cushions are tossed, and even the drapes are out of place. The chair, however, remains in its exact spot. A slightly wider and higher camera angle reduces the stature of the calm, collected, stately Basem from earlier. But, his hands tented in a diamond mudra show he is seeking to recover his inner peace. The missing gun from the false book interrogates the use of violence in response to violence that is at the center of this film. He returns the block of wood to its place. ### III (1:23:26) ![[Pasted image 20251014073614.png]] After their romantic encounter, her hair in a thick braid, Lisa is browsing Basem's books and somehow makes a beeline for the false book, dislodging the "real gun" from its hiding spot. Now, finally, the chair itself is moved. Basem is moved by Lisa. This change brings out Basem's story of loss. Does Yussef's fate justify the gun? The camera angle is slightly different, the books are not centered, but the block of wood still is. Camera is slightly below Lisa's eyeline. The lamp is not lit, and the flat lighting lends a domestic realism to the encounter. ### IV (1:54:46) ![[Pasted image 20251014075036.png]] Finally, during the denouement, after a slow push in on Basem in prison, a letter preserved inside a book, we get a reversed tracking shot pulling away from Adam, now in Basem's place, seated in the chair, an open book across the knee. A much tighter framing, a lower angle and chiaroscuro lighting lend a new and brooding intensity to Adam. The block of wood is moved. Will this cycle continue? Is Adam reading "Legalized Criminality" or Mahmoud Darwish? The moon always rises again but is never exactly the same. --- ### Donbas (2018) *The film includes many scenes that look staged for the theater. Give two examples (include screen grabs and time stamps). Why, do you think, this is the case?* “Every image that documents, bears witness to, refutes, or deepens the truth of a situation is something more than a film image of purely artistic fact; it becomes something which the System finds indigestible.” (“Towards a Third Cinema: Notes and Experiences for the Development of a Cinema of Liberation in the Third World: Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, Argentina, 1970”, 2021, p. 390) 'Witness' is a word compounded from 'wit', meaning to know, but it often carries the connotation of one who has seen, an eyewitness. There is also a well known English idiom we can lean on: "seeing is believing". If the power of third cinema lies in its ability to document, carry, and (re)present the reality of violence and repression, then those systems of repression have found an inoculant against revolution in the form of epistemic pollution, cognitive warfare, or to borrow an apt phrase from an apt pupil, "flooding the zone with shit". This 'shit' takes many forms including doctored images, images divorced from their original context, crisis actors, false flag attacks, agents provocateurs, hacks, leaks, false leaks, memes, social media trolls and deep fakes. This process of flooding the zone is the regime's use of misinformation and disinformation as an attack on the citizen's ability to discern truth, even to trust the certainty of what we see with our own eyes, intended to paralyze peoples' decision-making, provide the regime with justifications for repressive action, sufficient uncertainty for plausible deniability, and chaos that it can exploit to its own ends. This epistemic pollution makes documentary films now digestible by the System. Seeing is no longer believing, so witness loses its power. In the 2018 Ukrainian film Donbass, Sergei Loznitsa uses some of these same techniques for presenting the conditions of occupied Ukraine. Donbass is a work of fiction, but often presents itself as though it were a vérité documentary, and occasionally in the mode of TV journalism. > “This sense of ‘unstaged’ reality is achieved through a combination of visual and auditory techniques, notably the use of long takes, eye-level shots, handheld shots, as well as the absence of voice-over and non-diegetic music." (Berman, 2023, p. 1325) I have provided three images below that represent three sections which are similar in terms of subject but the camera movement is handled quite differently in all three scenes. In the opening scene (@5:01), the camera uses stationary tripod shot which slowly pans from the interview to the bus, giving the audience the aesthetics of television news. The scene at the checkpoint (@1:43) with the wounded and dead soldiers is a shaky handheld POV shot suggesting a vérité war documentary. Finally, the scene of the trailer with the murdered actors is shot with a crane with movement that highlights the films cinematic truth. I point this out, not to question the veracity of the story of *Donbass*, but because the blending of cinematic modes creates what Berman calls a “disorienting cognitive dissonance ” (Berman, 2023, p. 1329) While these "documentary" techniques increase the sense of the film's veracity and audiences' immersion and connection with the subjects. (Berman, 2023, p. 1332), for an audience already sensitive to the effects of disinformation, the film brings focus onto the cognitive warfare itself, "witnessing" the epistemic uncertainty itself, documenting the precarity of life in the theater of a cognitive war, and allowing an audience to connect with their own feelings of derealization portrayed clearly on the screen. The second half of that English idiom is less well known, "Seeing is believing, but feeling is the truth". Allowing the audience to feel the state of cognitive warfare itself, reclaims the power of the witness. (bus #1 5:01) Locked off tripod pan, TV news ![[Pasted image 20251019000624.png]] (Bus #2 1:43:52) handheld/verite style ![[Pasted image 20251019000158.png]] (Bus #3 1:50:43) Crane shot, emphasizing cinematic possibilities ![[Pasted image 20251019001745.png]] --- ### The Act of Killing (TAoK, 2012) > "...how many people did he kill? > about 1000. > How can he sleep? Isn't he haunted? > a lot of them went crazy. > No. they got rich. > yeah. rich from stealing. But killing all those people made them crazy too..." (TV Crew, 1:27:06--1:27:35) ![[Screenshot_20251021_105557_Canvas.jpg]] At around 1:24, immediately after a scene of simulated cannibalism and an ethereal scene of Anwar Congo and Herman Koto, Anwar appears on state operated [TVRI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TVRI) program [Dialog Khusus](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7594638/) . In his own mind, Anwar is presumably to promote his film, _Arsan dan Aminah_, but in a wider sense, the program is there to promote social compliance with the brutal totality of Indonesian state power. In the interview, Anwar situates his killings as an act of freedom, framed in terms of gangster genre films, while the host reads from a prepared script and praises the guests development of a "new, more efficient system for exterminating communists. ...more humane, less sadistic and avoided excessive violence..." and then, apparently going off script simply enthuses "...but you also just wiped them out!" The TV studio audience, who appear to be exclusively camouflage clad Pancasila Youth members applaud. After a bit of banter, when asked why the families of the 2.5 million victims of the Suharto regime don't seek "revenge", the red-bereted leader of the paramilitary group (Yapto Soerjosoemarno?) offers an explicit threat from his convertible VW thing: "...because we'd exterminate them all!" (1:24:40 -- 1:28:30) Oppenheimer, in an interview suggests "...perhaps this boastfulness is not a sign of pride, but the opposite---a defensive effort to run away from what they know to be true, namely, that they've done a terrible wrong." and while this may be true on an individualistic, psychological level, analyzing the film also requires reckoning with the collectivity of a culture who still publicly celebrates a "more efficient system for exterminating communists." By boastfully recounting the depravity of their participation in state endorsed genocide on a state operated TV program, with simulated severed heads displayed beside the host, the perpetrators of atrocity maintain the power of the state, and thereby their own impunity. Numerous levels of manipulation happen in this sequence, on a TV show within a film about the making of a film. The deception at the heart of The Act of Killing is a simple misdirection. The subjects of the film are focused on the cinematic goal given by the premise of TAOK: to make a Hollywood-style film of their own experiences in the death squads. The squad members accept this opportunity as an invitation to continue their own ongoing deception, the public performance of self-mythologizing "free men". Meanwhile, the TAOK filmmakers use this distraction to document the internal struggle of Anwar with his conscience, his memory, and his dreams. But “The risk with this emphasis on the personal journey lies in foregrounding the psyche over the polis, and with privileging affective sentiments concerning the individual over political transformation.” (Sara Kendall, 2017, p. 24) If the genocide was the act of "free men" and redemption lies in the power of compunction, then there is no need to critically consider the state's role in deindividuation, inhumanity and the abdication of responsibility and avoiding of justice for these atrocities. There is little or no meaningful interrogation of the social or political mechanisms that enabled the genocide, and so the state is performing its own misdirection. The film fails to frame its subjects squarely in the dialectic between personal and social responsibility for the atrocities, and TAOK fails to investigate in what ways Anwar and others may not have been able to refuse violence. As Oppenheimer is quoted, “All of our societies are built on mass violence,” (Sara Kendall, 2017, p. 23) There is a forgone conclusion of the universality of this kind of violence and an unexamined inclination to lay responsibility for this violence at the feet of the individual perpetrator of the act of killing. Sara Kendall. “Unsettling Redemption: The Ethics of Intrasubjectivity in The Act of Killing.” _MediaTropes_ 6, no. 2 (2017): 20–44. --- ## Unit 3 - Race and Migration ### Class [Do the Right Thing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_the_Right_Thing) (Spike Lee, USA, 1989) ![[Pasted image 20251030112507.png]] **1989 A.D.: The Geology of Bed-Stuy** In *DTRT* the city block is a geological site of stratification, a shifting machinic assemblage of cultural deterritorialization and reterritorialization. The block is a lacuna of Black identity (ecumenon) stratified in the city's larger predominately White stratum. Within the stratum of the neighborhood, distinct cultures (parastrata) exist next to one another, encoding and decoding territorial signs, exchanging at the margins expressions of form and substance (epistrata), powered by the heat, the tension, and energy of the summer (planomenon). Radio Raheem functions on the block as the embodiment (substance of expression) of Black Power and Black Unity (substance of content) through his boombox (form of expression) playing Public Enemy (form of content). This analysis is all cinematically coded into a single 180 degree crane shot starting at 32:45. After DJ Mister Señor Love Daddy puts on a track "to Tina" there is a smash cut to a crew of young Puerto Rican men reading, dancing, and drinking cans of beer on the stoop. We hear Mookie's dedication, Rubén Blades TU Y YO WE LOVE, playing as they begin to argue amongst themselves, expressing activation by the heat of the summer day. There is a whip pan past an empty street and we see the music is diegetic, coming from their Trident boombox, adorned with a sticker of Jesus and the Puerto Rican flag (visible in the next shot), from atop a car. The deep field of view reveals Mother Sister sitting in her window, fanning herself, and a black pedestrian representing the Black cultural milieu of the block. We suddenly hear the highly recognizable looping funk drums and horn hits of *Fight the Power* and there is a second, drifting pan back to the right, revealing Radio Raheem's Promax Super Jumbo boombox ([link](https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2014.270.2)) and his iconic LOVE / HATE rings. The camera tilts up sharply, giving us an imposing view of Raheem, centered in the frame. on his right, LOVE, is a blue sky and fluffy white clouds. on his left side, HATE, he is framed in by a crumbling brownstone facade, emblematic of the state of infrastructure in the neighborhood. The Puerto Rican voices rise and we get a third pan, and slow push in to the highly agitated men on the stoop, but the angle has shifted. Now the railing is cutting them off from the viewer, and they are shot from below. Their building looms and fills the frame, and sky is only visible in the reflections in the windows. The reading man uses his book to silence his friends, and he calls out Raheem for a boom box battle. At 33:21, our shot ends while the scene continues. In this single shot, the viewer has been drawn into the stratification of the Puerto Rican crew, in the space claimed by their boombox, then deterritorialized by the overwhelming power of intervention and ideological claim made by Public Enemy, and reterritorialized into the Black ecumenon by Radio Raheem, who is maintaining the Black identity of the block. [La Haine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Haine) (Mathieu Kassovitz, France, 1995) ![[Pasted image 20251104091531.png]] At [07:30](https://youtu.be/6MzMA7kfafw?si=dlNDtb8kmQfOuhJO) is a shot that both re-presents the familiar cliches of a dark, gritty, graffitied banlieu and also parodies it. Cassell, in a track suit, lighted by a single wide downlight, suggesting a long flourescent worklight, or a sewer drain. This is the underground, recalling Kusturicza, dancing to the sounds of brass and clarinet. The wide, fixed shot emphasizes that in some ways Vinz does not match his setting and yet it is hard to imagine him anywhere else. He is trapped, by the setting, but also by expectations. It confirms the audience's expectations for an urban crime drama, but contrasts the setting with Klezmer music and jubilant dancing. But is the dancing earnest, or an act of minstrelsy? The leprauchan heel click seems like a familiar part of the Hora, but is a one handed back handspring a typical part of this folk dance? Or is this an invocation of breakdancing, a modern folk dance for the multicultural banlieu? The graffiti points to the hybridity of the scene, "Rap 'n Roll". And to its anti-authoritarian (but also petty) milieu, "le gardien du bat 2 sacr des bites". However you read the dance, it establishes the banlieu as a site of hybridity, where new forms of culture are emerging from between the pressure of the concrete walls. It isn't until much later in the film that this scene makes sense in a deeper way. This is where Vinz has hidden the policeman's gun, and he is celebrating his immanent and now inevitable departure from the banlieu (one way or another). [The World](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_\(film\)) (Jia Zhangke, China, 2004) The thermos is a long standing and potent symbol in Hollywood for the working class. A thermos functions by trapping the energy in its contents, even after it has been removed from the heat source, it can be transported and applied as desired. A tightly sealed container, made of a low conductive material, encased in a vacuum, offers little chance for the electrons to activate the surrounding environment, and move out of the pressurized container. The workers in _The World_ carry and use thermoses throughout the film, not just for tea and lunch, but laundry. The thermoses themselves are as oversized as the monuments around them are undersized. there are risks with thermoses, and opportunities for compassion. Erxiao brings a sleeve for (?'s) glass after she burns her hand. Tao connects with Anna by offering hot water for laundry. Like the park's Eiffel Tower, the thermos is always standing in the background, an impressive technological achievement that promises a break in the monotony, the labor, but serves as a trap that contains the energy and prevents entropy. In a way, the thermos is "protecting imperialist property" and preserving an unusually warm winter. 13:30 - the heat in the thermos burns (?'s) hand. ![[Pasted image 20251106110537.png]] 20:59 the workers have thermoses ![[Pasted image 20251106110655.png]] 42:31 Sung has a thermos too. ![[Pasted image 20251106111221.png]] 47:38 Bathroom meeting of Tao and Anna. ![[Pasted image 20251106111315.png]] 51:18 thermos as stand in for the Eiffel tower stand-in ![[Pasted image 20251106111455.png]] 1:04:16 downstairs thermos ![[Pasted image 20251106111714.png]] 1:04:51 upstairs thermos ![[Pasted image 20251106111755.png]] 1:21:09 another meeting in a restroom. no thermos. ![[Pasted image 20251106112859.png]] 1:29:49 Erxiao offers a drink sleeve to protect (?'s) hand. ![[Pasted image 20251106113038.png]] 6:38 - no thermos. but what a great shot. ![[Pasted image 20251106110318.png]] ### Individual [Green Border](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Border) ([Agnieszka Holland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnieszka_Holland), Poland, 2023) [Children of Men](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Men) ([Alfonso Cuarón](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonso_Cuar%C3%B3n), U.S., 2006) [Illegal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_\(2010_film\)) ([Olivier Masset-Depasse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivier_Masset-Depasse), Belgium, 2010) [Jupiter’s Moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter%27s_Moon) ([Kornél Mundruczó](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korn%C3%A9l_Mundrucz%C3%B3), Hungary, 2017) [Atlantics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantics) ([Mati Diop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mati_Diop), France/Senegal, 2019) ## Unit 4 - Realism in the Digital Age ### Class [Festen (The Celebration)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Celebration) (Thomas Vinterberg, Denmark, 1998) [Taxi Tehran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_\(2015_film\)) (Jafar Panahi, Iran, 2015) [Birdman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birdman_\(film\)) (Alejandro González Iñárritu, USA, 2014) [The Congress](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Congress_\(2013_film\)) (Ari Folman, multiple countries, 2013) ### Individual **TBD** --- ## Additional Notes and Resources “For Levinas, ethics must always be a movement beyond recognition because recognition risks turning ethics into moral rule following.” (Oliver, 2015, p. 486) “Derrida proposes a radical ethics of responsibility beyond recognition for justice, hospitality, and forgiveness. Moving beyond Kant’s calculable hospitality based on the limited surface of the earth, which is always a limited hospitality, Derrida argues for an unlimited, infinite hospitality.” (Oliver, 2015, p. 487) This intersubjective practice of bearing witness is the act that may moves the ethics of a relationship from I/It to I/thou. Constitutive violence creates and defines a communal/social identity https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_article/pedagogy-and-epistemics-of-witness-teaching-palestine-in-a-time-of-genocide/ Pedagogy and Epistemics of Witness: Teaching Palestine in a Time of Genocide From: Palestine Now By Ahmed Kabel May 14, 2024 Butler, Judith. _Precarious Life : The Powers of Mourning and Violence_. With Internet Archive. London ; New York : Verso, 2004. [http://archive.org/details/precariouslifepo0000butl_p2t0](http://archive.org/details/precariouslifepo0000butl_p2t0). Derrida, Jacques. _Writing and Difference_. With Alan Bass. University of Chicago Press, 1978. Jensen, Meg, Margaretta Jolly, and Mary Robinson. _We Shall Bear Witness: Life Narratives and Human Rights_. 1st ed. Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography. University of Wisconsin Press, 2014. Nations, United. “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” United Nations, United Nations. Accessed October 27, 2025. [https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights](https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights). Oliver, Kelly. “Witnessing, Recognition, and Response Ethics.” _Philosophy & Rhetoric_ 48, no. 4 (2015): 473–93. [https://doi.org/10.5325/philrhet.48.4.0473](https://doi.org/10.5325/philrhet.48.4.0473). Sara Kendall. “Unsettling Redemption: The Ethics of Intrasubjectivity in The Act of Killing.” _MediaTropes_ 6, no. 2 (2017): 20–44.