The Land of Silence

This essay in black & white describes the victims of a civil war that has been going on for the past fifteen years in Sri Lanka. Made with cinematographic equipment from the 1960s and interspersed with occasional dialogues deliberately not translated but relayed by a background commentary, this film transforms images of the present into ghostly archives. It refuses to intensify the horror by making it appear close at hand, and denounces the alliance between technological virtuosity and fascination with war. Rather, it has faith in `history as a source of knowledge' to counteract silence. (J-P. R.)