\u00c9l\u00e9onore Weber\u2019s documentary, air-strike footage of pilots on night missions, could work well in a gallery<\/p>\n
This hypnotic meditation on modern warfare from \u00c9l\u00e9onore Weber is an experimental cine-essay that feels closer to a gallery installation than a documentary. Watching it is a bit of a test of concentration: 75 minutes of helicopter airstrike footage from American and French missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Clip after clip of pilots following what\u2019s on the ground hundreds of metres below. Who is that in their crosshairs: a Taliban fighter holding a Kalashnikov or a farmer with a rake? Farmers know that they get mistaken for fighters, so run and hide their tools when they hear helicopters. Which of course makes them look suspicious.<\/p>\n
In the cockpit, we hear American voices: \u201cRequest permission to engage.\u201d \u201cWe got a guy with an RPG.\u201d This is the notorious video WikiLeaks dubbed Collateral Murder<\/a>, a US airstrike filmed from an Apache helicopter in 2007. The rocket-propelled grenade launcher turned out to be a camera tripod belonging to a Reuters photographer, who was one of a dozen civilians killed in the attack. It\u2019s impossible to watch and not think of computer games. \u201cKill! Kill! Kill\u201d we hear in another video \u2013 you can almost feel the itch to shoot everything that moves.<\/p>\n