Anonymous

To Watch A War (A Film Found On The Internet)

2018,
311 min., possibly Ukraine

An audio-visual meditation on the meaning of moving images and witnessing during wartime. The film uploaded to YouTube by an anonymous collective consists of amateur video recordings made in Eastern Ukraine between 2014 and 2018 during the first phase of the Russia-Ukraine war. By desynchronizing and cutting the video and the sound, a space of disorientation is created, where questions about the nature of war and its representations can be asked and remain unanswered. Montage as an instrument of power is utilized to disjoint videos and with them the certainties of experiencing history from a safe distance as a linear movement with a beginning and an end. By removing the images from their context, thus depriving them of their function, the film attempts to formulate a visual grammar of a war that was too often described or discussed, but rarely felt. “This is not a film about war. This is a film about what can be seen at war. This is a film about how war can be seen while remaining at home.”