On the Heights All is Peace

‘Mobility of the eye, immobility of the vast mountains. The shrapnel, long before it arrives you hear it coming, a sound like the whistling of the wind, that gets louder and louder. It seems to last forever. Wrapped in a piece of newspaper, the shabby possessions of the dead soldier are on the table: a purse, the rosette of his beret, a pipe. The list of casualties… dead… dead… dead, all written one above the other.A composition of film documents of the Austro-Hungarian and the Italian army on the Alpine Front and of original film material by war-film pioneer Luca Comerio.A deconstruction of propaganda and shows of force in documentary images from the First World War. Looking for the individual, the ‘ordinary’ soldier, in film archives that show anonymous crowds: in details, a facial expression, physiognomy, individual behaviour. Images that are seen fromthe’wounded body’ of the nitrate film material, physically present on the battlefield: fragments of perforations, traces of colour, scratches, breaks, bloodstains, errors, fingerprints. (…) The indifference of arms: robbed from the enemy and now pointing at it. Beasts, poor beasts, dragged along in a human war.’(Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi)