dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y
by Johan Grimonprez
[1997, 68min.]
Audio Transcript in English
VOICE OVER 1:
Shouldn't death be a swan dive, graceful, white-winged and smooth, leaving the surface undisturbed?
TITLE:
dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y [repeated]
A FILM BY
JOHAN GRIMONPREZ
PRESS CONFERENCE:
— The airplane is safe.
— Tell me. There had been a report that the hijacker had asked for some sandwiches. Did he get those sandwiches?
— No, sir.
TITLE:
November 1969
FIRST TRANSATLANTIC HIJACK
Vietnam vet Raffaele Minichiello hijacks American airliner back home to Rome.
VOICE OVER 2:
Everything around us tends to channel our lives toward some final reality in print or on film. Two lovers quarrel in the back of a taxi and a question becomes implicit in the event. Who will write the book and who will play the lovers in the movie? Everything seeks its own heightened version. Nothing happens until it's consumed.
There's the haunted time of the novelist, intimate, pressing, stale and sad. Every book is a bug-eyed race, let's face it. Must finish. Can't die yet.
VOICE OVER 1:
He was often lost. He got lost in the hotel every time he walked out of his room and turned left to get to the elevator, which was consistently to the right.
TITLE:
March 1970,
Fukuoka, Japan
JAPANESE RED ARMY SEIZES
AIRLINER WITH SAMURAI SWORDS
TITLE:
Tokyo Streets Deserted:
MILLIONS WATCH
FIRST TELEVISED HIJACK
TITLE:
May 1970
Hiroshima, Japan
VOICE OVER 1:
All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers' plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children's games. We edge nearer death every time we plot. It's like a contract that all must sign, the plotters as well as those who are targets of the plot.
VOICE OVER 2:
It is a curious knot that binds novelists and terrorists. What terrorists gain, novelists lose.Years ago, I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now, bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.
TITLE:
June 1972
Tel Aviv, Israel
Kozo Okamoto Tried
for Lod Airport Massacre
TITLE:
We, Red Army Soldiers wanted to
become stars of Orion when we'd die.
It calms my heart to think that all the
people we killed will also become stars
in the same sky.
As the revolution goes on, how the
stars will multiply - Kozo Okamoto
VOICE OVER 1:
When he woke up on the hotel bed, he was in shorts, still wearing his socks and one shoe. He'd removed his pants, or someone had, without taking of his left shoe. Rides to airports made him quiet and glum. He listened to news updates on the radio, curiously excited reports about firemen removing a burning sofa from a tenement in Watertown.
TITLE:
STUDY
REVEALS:
DOG
LOVERS
LIVE LONGER
THAN
CAT LOVERS
TITLE:
July 1974
Nagoya Airport, Japan
PRESS CONFERENCE:
— Mister Brill, you are back among your family now. How was it like?
— It was a gamut of very many emotions: from surprise to shock, to fear, to joy, to laughter and then again fear at the end, yes and almost tragedy, yes.
TITLE:
Herbert Brill
Pepsi Cola Executive
PRESS CONFERENCE:
— Well, you were together in that little cabin with over a hundred people for three days. What was it like living in that kind of an atmosphere?
— Actually, it wasn't bad at all. It wasn't that small, a 727 is fairly comfortable.
TITLES:
April 1970
38th Parallel
SAMURAI SWORD
AT PILOT'S THROAT!
South Korean airport
disguised as North Korean
base to mislead hijackers.
Set up fails: American jazz radio
gives ploy away.
PRESS CONFERENCE:
— They wanted to create a new revolution around the world. They were going to North Korea for training, they thought, and then some further education - politically - and then on to Cuba.
TITLE:
Universal International News
CUBA AND CASTRO
First Films From
Behind Rebel Lines
Voice: Ed Herlihy
NEWSREEL VOICE OVER:
First films of Cuban rebel leader Fidel Castro and his ragged force in their mountain stronghold, made shortly before fighting erupted in all six of Cuba's provinces. This is the band, numbered at about one thousand that for sixteen months has held out in the rugged Sierra Maestre Mountains, near the island's eastern tip.
TITLE:
Cuba 1958-59
FIDELISTAS
SKYJACK
THEIR WAY
TO POWER!
PRESS CONFERENCE:
And she came in the cockpit and said: there's a man back here with the biggest gun you ever saw.
And I just looked at him and he pulled out a shotgun and put it in my stomach, and said: “And tell the captain that we're going to Cuba.” And I said: “You're kidding.”
And repeated it again: He says: “To Cuba or I will kill her.”
I said: “Don't shoot, sit down. We go to Cuba”, we did.
— They spoke Spanish.
— What did they say?
— Havana.
NEWSREEL VOICE OVER:
Castro himself has become a figure of legend in the 16 months since he invaded Oriente province from a small boat. The rebels' actual achievements were few for most of that time but by mere existence and survival, Castro's force has both grown and exerted an influence out of all proportion to its size.
PRESS CONFERENCE:
And they wanted to come back with an airplane.
At the cockpit, there was a another one who came down with a cowboy-looking outfit on and a regular cowboy gun.
He dragged her up in front of the microphone and said: “Everybody put your hands over your head. We're going to Cuba.” And we went.
TITLE (newspaper):
NEWS
Castro Greets 1st hijacked 747
REPORTER:
A 23 year old Angel Luho, a Puerto rican, was sitting here in the last row. The passenger next to him remembers he was very nervous, smoking even when the sign said no. And about an hour and a half out of Kennedy, Luho made his move.
TITLE:
1st HIJACKED 747:
Return from Havana shopping spree
TITLE:
August 1969
JFK Airport, New York
REPORTER:
He walked down the aisle, passed three sky marshals and forced the 20-year old stewardess, Lucinda Rossen, to take him up to in the first class lounge. She called the captain, told him the situation and in effect Luho had taken over the plane. Later, they discovered his only weapons were a ballpoint pen and a metal comb.
TITLE (pilots with billboards):
'Don't make us stop flying' 'Stop hijacking now'
ANONYMOUS VOICE OVER:
January has been the greatest month for skyjacking. 11 aircraft there, there were 30 last year and we just come up to the boiling point now and I think, something serious has to be done to correct the problem.
VOICE OVER 1:
You think the writer belongs to the far margin, doing dangerous things. In Central America, writers carry guns. They have to. The state should want to kill all writers. Every government, every group that holds power should feel so threatened by writers that they hunt them down, everywhere.
VOICE OVER 2:
A women who harbors a terrible secret. A man with a haunted look. A man who never comes out of his room. A woman who stands by the letter box for hours, waiting for something that never seems to arrive. A man with no past. There is a smell about the place of unhappy lives in the movies.
TITLE:
1931 FIRST RECORDED HIJACK
Peruvian revolutionaries seize
PanAm to drop pamphlets over Lima.
VOICE OVER:
Today, for the first time, the black people of the West are beginning to look homeward.
TITLE:
1965
Malcolm X
Paris
VOICE OVER:
They are beginning to look back toward the Mother Continent of Africa and they are gaining spiritual strength from these roots. The African Continent is on the rise, the Motherland is on the rise and our people all over the Western hemisphere are looking back at this rising continent.
TITLE:
1968-69
Skyjack route to Cuba
BLACK PANTHERS ON THE RUN
TITLE:
Castro reported to treat Negroes badly.
Next stop: Algeria.
VOICE OVER:
And for the first time, not only is the black man on the African Continent seeking and fighting for his place in the sun, but his fight is putting the same spirit in the black people in the West. And we're also seeking and fighting for our place in the sun and we will not rest until that place has been secured.
TITLE:
January 1972, Algiers Black Panther Hijack
TITLE:
February 1968 Miami
TITLE:
November 1965 New Orleans
TITLE:
January 1970 Panama
VOICE OVER 1:
There is no moment on certain days when he is not thinking terror. They have us in their power. In boarding areas, he never sits near windows in case of flying glass. He carries a Swedish passport, so that is o.k. unless you believe that terrorists killed the Prime Minister. And he uses codes in his address book for names and addresses of writers, because how can you tell if the name of a certain writer is dangerous to carry.
TITLE:
Unattended luggage will be immediately destroyed!
VOICE OVER 1:
He's careful about reading matter. Nothing religious comes with him. And no pictures of guns or sexy women. That's on the one hand. On the other hand, he knows in his heart that he's going to die from a dreadful slow disease, so you're safe with him on a plane.
VOICE OVER:
Security expert Lee Roberts says how you pick your seat can help you avoid contact with a hijacker or terrorist. He says don't sit by emergency doors where gunmen enter and exit but not too far from the emergency doors either.
LEE ROBERTS:
We would like to see you sit in several seat rows in front or behind the exit and in the middle of the seating arrangement.
VOICE OVER:
Sitting on an aisle makes you vulnerable.
LEE ROBERTS:
That you may be one of the first people grabbed.
VOICE OVER:
Avoid first class, behind the cockpit, which is where the terrorists go.
When you're on the plane, know how to get out.
Tracy Fulford is a professional airline pilot.
TRACY FULFORD:
I recommend everybody sit down, look around, see where the exits are.
Just have a plan.
VOICE OVER:
For example, count the rows to the emergency exit in case there are no lights. And think about safety inside the terminal. Modern terminals are set up like shopping malls with restaurants, shops, magazine racks.
Terminals have been targets for terrorist's bombs. The less time in a terminal, the safer you are.
TITLE:
December 1985
Rome/Vienna Airport
ASSAULT ON HAMBURGER STAND
VOICE OVER:
Robert showed me how aerosol cans can hide a bomb.
LEE ROBERTS:
You could put a small amount of plastic explosive in here.
TITLE (on TV screen):
SPECIAL
BULLETIN
VOICE OVER:
We interrupt this program for a special news bulletin.
TITLE (on TV screen):
CONELRAD
ALERT
TITLE (on TV screen):
TAKE
COVER
VOICE OVER 2:
There must be something in family life that generates factual error, over closeness, the noise and the heat of being. Perhaps something even deeper, like the need to survive. The family process works towards sealing off the world. Small errors grow heads, fictions proliferate. Not to know is a weapon of survival, he says. Magic and superstition become entrenched as the powerful orthodoxy of the clan. What a heartless theory.
TITLE:
Universal International News
FREEDOM FLIGHT
Hungarians Seize
Plane to Germany
voice: Ed Herlihy
TITLE:
July 1965
West Germany
NEWSREEL VOICE OVER:
An Hungarian airliner stands on a NATO airstrip in West-Germany at the end of a daring flight to freedom across the Iron Curtain that was marked by a savage mid air struggle for control of the plane.
TITLE:
Neither East nor West
applauds planes seized
to the 'wrong side'
of the Iron Curtain.
New Word Invented:
HIJACK!
TALKING HEAD:
Never in the history of mankind have the nations of the world reacted with such unanimity and co-operation. Tonight the lights will burn until dawn in the United Nations building as the leaders of the world map a cause of action.
POLITICIAN:
Stay out of this hemisphere and don't try to start your plans and your conspiracies over here. Translation?
TITLE:
Universal International
News KOREA Throngs
Protest Real Theft of Plane
Voice: Fred Maness
NEWSREEL VOICE OVER:
Pam Moon Jum, familiar name, familiar symbol of frustration. As in the past communist members of the military armistice commission stymie the efforts of discussion and negotiation. On this occasion for the return of the Korean airliner that with 32 aboard that was hijacked and forced north of the 38th Parallel by red agents.
TITLE:
February 1958
38th Parallel,
North Korea
VOICE OVER 2:
We understand how reality is invented. A person sits in a room and thinks a thought and it bleeds out into the world. Every thought is permitted. And there is no longer moral or spatial distinction between thinking and acting. Stories have no point if they don't absorb our terror.
VOICE OVER 1:
Put a man in a room and lock the door. There is something serenely pure here. Let's destroy the mind that makes words and sentences. Gain the maximum attention. They probably kill you ten minutes later, then photograph your corpse and keep the picture handy for the time when it can be used more effectively. Then the bomb went off. Instantaneous worldwide attention.
TITLE:
August 1975
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
TITLE:
Japanese Red Army
takes off for Libya.
TITLE:
MAO SAID,
DEATH CAN BE LIGHT
AS A FEATHER
OR HEAVY
AS A MOUNTAIN
TITLE:
LET
A HUNDRED
FLOWERS BLOOM
Mao Tse-tung
TITLE:
July 1973
Kuwait
CONTROL TOWER:
For immediate transmission to hijackers of Jumbo jet 444 of Japan...
TITLE:
July 1973,
Baninah Airport
Benghazi, Libya
TITLE:
Dr. David Hubbard
Founder of the Aberrant Behavior Center
Dallas, Texas
DR. DAVID HUBBARD:
Well over 50% are paranoid schizophrenic and the others may well one day be or have been.
TITLE:
THE SKYJACKER'S PROFILE
DR. DAVID HUBBARD:
A large number of them are very acutely suicidal. So, the threat of skyjacker with the possibility of death is like telling a child if you'll be bad, I'll give you a candy.
There are certain rather uniform characteristics about them including a most unusual aspect of dream-life in which they dream of being able to fly. So, it is rather startling to talk to a 50-year old man and having him telling you a 7-year old child's dream and at the same moment know that this man has committed a crime on board an aircraft in which he forced the pilot to make his dream come true.
There is one little airline that has real short cut skirts and a real sexy sort of a rig, and that one little airline has been hit in complete disproportion with the magnitude of the traffic that it holds. But here is a man who has really no sexual experience at all and he looks at the hostess as a sexual symbol and when he takes his gun and sticks it in this good-looking girl's belly and says “Honey, we're going all the way - to Cuba”, he may very well be making the first sexual gesture in his life. And he often comments with pleasure how happy he was to see the fear in her eyes.
First time in his life he's ever scared a woman.
TITLE:
My rendezvous with history was
approaching... Leila Khaled
TITLE:
August 1969 Leila Khaled commandeers TWA Boeing 707 into 7-min detour over occupied homeland.
TITLES:
August 1970
Amman, Jordan
Newfound celebrity
Leila Khaled
prepares
for next
hijack with
facelift.
MOUNA ABDEL-MAJID:
For you Westerners, you don't understand. You have all the Israeli propaganda and you think 'the Arabs', you know, 'the dirty Arabs'!
TITLE:
Mouna Abdel-Majid Hijacker/Palestinian Commando
MOUNA ABDEL-MAJID:
First, we have to fight outside our territory and we have to bring our case to the whole world to understand our case.
JOURNALIST:
People that you helped to release were responsible for the death of a small child. What are your feelings about that?
ADEL ABDEL-MAJID:
Could I answer this?
TITLES:
Adel Abdel-Majia
Hijacker/palestinian Commando
ADEL ABDEL-MAJID:
You said the death of a small child. I want to ask you the death of 30 children of a school in Egypt, the death of about 70 human workers in Egypt, the death of people in Erbahir, the death of many human beings who have been killed and murdered I could say by the Israelis.
TITLE:
August 1970
Amman, Jordan
Headquarters of the Popular Front
for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP]
NIXON, PRESS CONFERENCE:
In a sense, when we think about hijacking we can make an argument against science. Because if it hadn't been for science, we wouldn't have airplanes. If we didn't have airplanes, we wouldn't have had airplane hijacking. And so, we could argue therefore, it would have been better if we wouldn't have science.
TITLE:
1969
Airport security measures adopted
First magnetometers installed.
AIRPORT SECURITY CONTROL:
— I have a wrist watch and keys, and I have a tight clip belt buckle on, and that's about it.
— Fine, I suppose you just proceed through this gate here.
— Now, let's try it with a weapon.
VOICE OVER:
Terrorists have made their own bombs from coca tins and bottles. There are plenty of headaches in this one.
VOICE OVER 1:
The first incident was unimportant because it was only a series of phone calls. The second incident was unimportant because nobody was killed. For you pure trauma. Otherwise strictly routine. You are nonpersons for the moment, victims without an audience. Get killed and maybe they will notice you.
TITLE:
September 6 1970 Zerka, Jordan
SKYJACK SUNDAY OVER EUROPE:
Palestinian Politics Blown Sky High!
TITLE:
2 JETS TO DESERT
3rd JET BLOWN UP ON CAIRO RUNWAY
TITLE:
4th PLANE FOILED LEILA
KHALED CAPTURED
TITLE:
5th PLANE
SEIZED DEMAND: KHALED'S RELEASE
SLOGAN WRITTEN ON AIRPLANE FUSELAGE:
DOWN WITH IMPERIALISM, ZIONISM & ISRAEL
TITLE:
September 1970
'Revolution' Airstrip
PRESS INTERVIEW WITH PILOT:
Ah, it made me sick. 25 million dollars and what utter waste.
PRESS INTERVIEW WITH COUPLE:
— My wife slid down and ended on her head and I hadn't heard her for a minute and I had to pick her up and by the time I got her up we were both running again and... — Did you run very fast?
— I ran as fast as I could! — We were barefooted. We had to take our shoes off to keep from damaging the slides. They're nylon chutes. We just jumped and slipped down, got up and run.
— Were you very very frightened by all this?
— No, sir. I wasn't. Everybody was too calm to make you wanna be frightened.
— You are not the kind of person who normally runs across airfields?
— No, not at all. — What happened to your feet?
— They're pretty cut up...
— We had to take our shoes off, so we lost our shoes. No one has any shoes. PRESS CONFERENCE:
— Can you tell us what your first experience was with the guerillas? Did you have an opportunity to talk to them?
— Yes, sure. They were all nice.
— The guerillas are real nice. What makes you say that?
— Well, they are alright. I talked to one of them.
— Did they express an interest in your thoughts about what they were doing.
— Oh yeah, they said that that was their life what they were doing, you know, fighting.
— Did you feel menaced by all the weapons around you or not?
— No.
— You didn't?
— Were you frightened at any time during this experience?
— No.
— Did you have a good time, full of excitement? Is that what you say? You were excited by it all.
— I had a good time, I guess.
— You would like to do it again?
— I don't know, I would probably miss too much school.
TITLE:
Adel Abdel-Majid Hijacker turned ëreleasedí hostage
ADEL ABDEL-MAJID, PRESS INTERVIEW:
It is not hijacking, let's say. You should say, it's trying to tell the people what's our problem. I mean, all this 20 years, none of you foreigners had even known that there exist people called Palestinians. 2 million human beings, they had been thrown out of their homes, of their land, of their pride, of everything for 20 or 23 years.
VOICE OVER 2:
I felt the deadweight of travel, the apathy and vagueness of being in a place that didn't matter to me, being invisible to myself, sleeping in a room I wouldn't recognize if I had a picture of it in front of me.
VOICE OVER 2:
Some people make bombs. Some people make calls. Anonymous. Bomb threats.
VOICE OVER 1:
People who make phone calls don't set off bombs. The real terrorists make their calls after the damage is done. If at all. The next time, he thinks, there won't be a phone call.
DIALOGUE BETWEEN HIJACKER AND CONTROL TOWER:
— I am asking for fuel. Our only alternative is to leave here, otherwise I am quite sure the plane will be exploded.
— I'll give you an answer in a minute time.
— Please let the gentleman know that we are prepared for any other arrangement to be made for the freeing of the passengers.
REPORTER RUNNING ON AIRFIELD:
You are running, you are running! The camera's running.
TITLE:
May 1972 Lod Airport, Tel Aviv
First assault on hijacked plane:
Israeli commandos in mechanic's gear
Palestinian grenades in beauty case
TITLE:
Captain Levy of Sabena Airliner
CAPTAIN LEVY:
They started kissing each other to say goodbye. There were tears in the eyes of the girls. And I realized at that moment that this was it, that they were going to touch off the fuses to the explosives.
VOICE OVER 2:
The way they live in the shadows, live willingly with death. The way they hate many of the things you hate. Their discipline and cunning. The coherence of their lives. The way they excite admiration. In societies reduced to blur and glut, terror is the only meaningful act. There is too much everything, more things and messages and meanings than we can use in 10 000 lifetimes.
TITLE:
Rima Tannous Eissa Hijacker of Sabena Airliner
VOICE OVER 2:
Is history possible? Is anyone serious? Who do we take seriously? The lethal believer, the person who kills and dies for faith. Everything else is absorbed. Only the terrorist stands outside.
TITLE:
Suicide car
1985 South Lebanon
VOICE OVER 1:
Then there was the finger he had received in the mail. He kept it around a while, a ring finger he guessed, gone mummy-brown, and he used to look at it and wonder what it meant.
VOICE OVER 2:
There was a line I kept repeating to myself that had the mystery and the power I had felt nowhere else but in the shared past of people who had loved each other, who lived so close that they'd memorized each others warts and cowlicks and addled pauses. So the line was not one voice but several and it spoke a more or less nonsensical theme to remind him that words stick even as lives fly apart.
TITLE:
July 1973 Tokyo Airport
Benghazi hijack drama:
Hostages return home.
TITLE:
Ilich Ramirez Sanchez
a.k.a. CARLOS, the Jackal
TITLE:
1970's TERRORIST SWAP SHOP:
Japanese Red Army, German Red Army
Faction & PFLP trade passports,
kalashnikovs & hijackings.
TITLE:
October 1972
Munich Airport, Germany
TITLE:
October 1977
Mogadishu, Somalia
RAF team with PFLP in Lufthansa hijack
Demand: RAF leaders release.
DIALOGUE BETWEEN HIJACKER AND CONTROL TOWER:
—I'll give you ten seconds. If you don't send the permission to take away the ground power, I'm gonna go blow off his head. Did you get that?
— There's no alternative - no alternative with all the people on board.
TITLE:
HIJACKERS
ORDER
BIRTHDAY CAKE
& CHAMPAGNE
FOR STEWARDESS
TITLE:
PILOT EXECUTED
TITLE:
PLANE STORMED
TITLE:
HIJACKERS KILLED
TITLE:
Stammheim, Germany:
RAF LEADERS
FOUND DEAD
IN CELLS
JOURNALIST:
Did you attend the medical examination of Baaders body?
TITLE:
Otto Schilly
RAF defense
Lawyer
OTTO SCHILY:
He was killed by shots exact in his neck.
JOURNALIST:
Do you believe he could have committed suicide?
OTTO SCHILY:
No, I don't believe it.
TITLE:
October 1977 Stuttgart Germany RAF founders Gudrun Ensslin & Andreas Baader buried together
TITLE:
A HUNDRED
FLOWERS
HAVE BLOOMED
Red Army Faction
VOICE OVER 1:
Men have tried throughout history to cure themselves of death by killing others. The dier passively succumbs, the killer lives on.
There must have been something different about those crowds. What was it? Let me whisper the terrible word: death. Many of those crowds were assembled in the name of death. They were there to attend tributes to the dead. Crowds came to form a shield against their own dying. To become a crowd is to keep out death. To break off from the crowd is to risk death as an individual, to face dying alone. Crowds came for this reason above all others. They were there to be a crowd. The future belongs to crowds.
TITLE:
October 1981
Cairo, Egypt
Anwar Sadat Assassination
SAFETY INSTRUCTIONS:
If the airline pressure changes suddenly, the compartment above your head will open and an oxygen mask will be within your reach. Extinguish all cigarettes. Pull down on the mask to start the flow of oxygen. Place the mask over your nose and mouth and continue to breath normally. Then take the elastic band on the mask and place it over your head...
TITLE (on TV screens):
NO SMOKING
VOICE OVER 2:
If our complaints have a focal point, it would have to be the TV set where the outer torment lurks causing fears and secret desires. Every disaster made us wish for more, for something bigger, grander, more sweeping.
VOICE OVER 1:
Shouldn't death be a swan-dive, graceful, white-winged and smooth, leaving the surface undisturbed? He took it all in. He believed it all. Pain, ecstasy, dog food, all the seraphic matter, the baby bliss that falls from the air.
HIJACKED PILOT:
They sometimes bring us airline food, and they sometimes bring us Lebanese food. It's different to us, but it's very delicious. I would say on whole the food is OK.
RADIO COMMUNICATION:
They are beating the passengers. They are beating the passengers. They are threatening to kill them now. We want the fuel, now - immediately!
TITLE:
June 1985 Beirut / Algiers
TWA FLIGHT 847: 17 - DAY ORDEAL
Shiite hijackers evade SWAT teams:
hop back & forth between airports.
TITLE:
Beirut, Lebanon
Captain John Testrake
PRESS INTERVIEW WITH RELEASED HOSTAGE:
They turned around and the gun went up in the air and the hand grenade with one fellow. And the other fellow just had a hand grenade. And they started screaming in Arabic. So, I said to myself this is it. It's a hijacking. VOICE OVER PILOT: They stole my airplane from me and the least I could do was to go back and get it.
TITLE (on sign):
WELCOME HOME, JOHN TESTRAKE
RONALD REAGAN, VOICE OVER:
There's only one thing to say and I say it from the bottom of my heart, in the name of all the people of our country: Welcome home!
TITLE (on sign):
WELCOME HOME JOHN
INTERVIEW WITH PILOT:
They drank Pepsis continuously and they would spill it on this center console right here where the radio switches are. They also smoked 24 hours a day and their ashes would drip into the spilled Pepsi. And they were young guys and they had good appetite, so they ate a lot. And they would spill their food in there too. And it just sort of made a kind of a soupy mess all over that radio panel there.
VOICE OVER:
Ladies and gentlemen, this your captain again. I've just been talking with flight control at London Airport. The temperature there is 64 degrees...
VOICE OVER 2:
Novelists and terrorists play a zero-sum game. What terrorists gain, novelists lose. The danger they represent equals our own failure to be dangerous.
VOICE OVER 1:
Terror makes the new future possible. He is saying, men live in history as never before. We make and change history minute by minute. We do history in the morning and change it after lunch.
INSIDE AIRPLANE:
Everybody down, down, down! Everybody down. Put your head down. Get your heads down. Down, down, down!
SAFETY INSTRUCTOR:
The type of operations and protection that you will receive as United States' ambassadors...
INSTRUCTOR MIMICKING HIJACK:
Move, everybody up, up, up
SAFETY INSTRUCTOR:
It's usual, despite precautions taken to limit control information for you and your family to develop patterns of behavior.
INSIDE AIRPLANE:
Everybody down. Hands up onto the seats.
SAFETY INSTRUCTOR:
Habits that offer to the trained observer critical information useful in planning and executing a terrorist assassination.
INSIDE AIRPLANE:
Those American bastards, pigs.
SAFETY INSTRUCTOR:
In a terrorism sense: Middle-East, Latin America, Far East.
TITLE:
March 1989
Washington DC
INSIDE AIRPLANE:
You, what country? Get down.
SAFETY INSTRUCTOR:
What you see in front of you is the marked ambassador. This is the advance man. This is the agent in charge of the detail. This is the body cover. This agent is your AIC or agent in charge of the details is dedicated to you. And you only.
RONALD REAGAN:
Terrorists be on notice!
TITLE:
Codename 'Flower'
CIA mission: eliminate Qaddafi
AMERICAN POLITICIAN:
You've got the B1B bomber to come over low, the B52 come over high. You've got the FB11A, the F4502 phantom two,... You've got the F-15 Eagles and on, and on, and on. Those people only understand one thing and that's force. It's time to take names and kick rear end.
TITLE:
1986: TERRORISM PEAKS!
25 U.S. dead from terrorism
12000 more die from slipping ... in bathtubs
RONALD REAGAN:
You can run but you can't hide.
TITLE:
March 1981 Reagan Assassination Attempt
TITLE (on board):
NO WEAPON IS ABSOLUTE
TITLE:
July 1988 USS Vincennes
MISTAKEN IDENTITY:
Iran Airbus shot down over Persian Gulf.
SOLDIER:
We had him ... dead on!
TITLE:
October 1988 San Diego
USS Vincennes' homecoming
VOICE OVER 2:
I recalled the weather, the high clear sky, distance less, flags whipping on 5th Avenue and a movie actress getting out of a taxi.
VOICE OVER 1:
The blast made him jerk half around but he didn't leave his feet or go back against the wall. He jerked and ducked, shielding his head with his forearm, windows blowing out. He turned his back to the blast wave, bracing himself against the wall with his elbows, hands clasped behind his head. He thought he was on a plane going down.
TITLE:
18.21.55 GMT
What are instructions?
TITLE:
18:21:59 GMT
Soviet Pilot 163
TITLE:
18.21.59 GMT
Roger
TITLE:
18:22:02 GMT Soviet Pilot 805
TITLE:
18:22:02 GMT
The target is decreasing speed
TITLE:
18:22:17 GMT
I'm going around it, I'm already moving in front of the target.
TITLE:
18.22.23 GMT
I've increased speed.
TITLE:
18.22.29 GMT
No. It is decreasing speed.
TITLE:
18.22.42 GMT
It should have been earlier
Haw can I chase it?
TITLE:
18.22.55 GMT
I'm already abeam of the target!
Now I have to fall back a bit from the target.
TITLE:
18.22.55 GMT
Repeat
TITLE:
18.23.10 GMT
The target's altitude is
10,000 [meters]
TITLE:
September 1983
KOREAN AIRLINE DOWNING
TITLE:
18.23.18 GMT
From me it is located 70 degrees to the left
TITLE:
18.23.37 GMT
I'm dropping back, now I will try a rocket.
TITLE:
18:25:11 GMT
Soviet Pilot 805
TITLE:
18:25:11 GMT
I'm closing on the target. I'm in lock-on.
TITLE:
18:25:11 GMT
Distance to target is 8 [kilometers].
TITLE:
18:25:46 GMT
Soviet Pilot 805
TITLE:
Z.G. [missile warheads locked on]
TITLE:
18:25:46 I have executed the launch.
TITLE:
The target is destroyed.
VOICE OVER 2:
The novel used to feed our search for meaning, but our desperation led us to something larger and darker. So, we turn to the news, which provides an unremitting mood of catastrophe. We don't need the novel.
TITLE:
December 1984
Teheran, Iran
TITLE:
Larnaca, Cyprus
ALL TIME HIJACKING HIGH:
Hizbollah 16-day siege.
TITLE:
INSERT
COMMERCIAL
HERE
VOICE OVER 2:
Dying is a quality of the air. It's everywhere and nowhere. Men shout as they die, to be noticed, remembered for a second or two. The dead have faces, automobiles. If you don't know a name, you know a street name, a dog's name. He drove an orange Mazda. You know a couple of useless things about a person that become major facts of identification, when he dies suddenly, after a short illness, in his own bed with a comforter and matching pillows, on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, thinking about his dry cleaning.
WOMAN CRYING ON FLOOR:
My baby! Oh, my baby!
TITLE:
December 1988
JFK Airport, New York
VOICE OVER:
When the first 747 rose into the sky at Fort Everett, Washington, it was more than just an airplane taking shape. It was Pan Am's response to the needs of its public. It was the beginning of a whole new system of transportation. The physical manifestation of a decade of planning. Now, with ten years of pioneering jet-flight across the ocean as part of history; Pan Am was looking to the future with this super-jet.
TITLE:
December 1988 Lockerbie, Scotland SUITCASE-BOMB JET HITS TOWN ∞ PanAm blames CIA ∞ CIA accuses Libya ∞ Terrorists worldwide claim responsibility
TITLE:
I was watching 'This is your life' when the plane crashed through the ceiling and knocked me headfirst into the TV. Bobbie Miller, Lockerbie resident
VOICE OVER 1:
The supermarket shelves have been rearranged. It happened one day without warning.
TITLE:
July 1994
Minerali Gordi Airport, Chechnya
TITLE:
December 1994
Marseille, France
TITLE:
November 1990 & February 1993
Leningrad/ St Petersburg, Russia
PRESS INTERVIEW WITH DYING TERRORIST:
— Can you talk?
— Stomach... a bullet in my stomach
— What in your stomach?
— A bullet...
— Why did you want to take hostages?
CREDITS:
produced by
Kunstencentrum STUK, Het Atelier [Rony Vissers]
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, New Media Department [Christine Van Assche]
with the support of
Documenta X, Kassel
Klapstuk 97, Leuven
Fundacion Provincial de Cultura, Diputación de Cádiz; The Faces of Flanders, Ministerie van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap, Brussel
executive producers
Rony Vissers
Corinne Castel
with the collaboration of
Herman Asselberghs
production assistance
Centre Georges Pompidou, Audiovisual Department
Murielle Dos Santos
Documenta X
Catherine David
Thomas Mulcaire
written & directed
Johan Grimonprez
with excerpts from
White Noise & Mao II by Don DeLillo
music & sample collage
David Shea
script consultants
Vincent Alexandre | Onome Ekeh | Herman Asselberghs
assistant director
Stéphane Pichard
off-screen voicese
Black Sifichi | Carlos Mullins
additional voices
Ri-Huye Kim | Leanne Sacramone
technical coordinator
Hans Meijer
sound editor & mixer
Nicolas Joly
assistant editors
Luc Lavault | Fanny Soubirou
additional research
Jonas Boel | Arne Boonen | Onome Ekeh | Stéphane Pichard
additional photography
Anouk De Clercq | Lieven Van Baelen | Karen Vanderborght
accountants
Kurt Lannoye | Ilse Scheers
production assistants
Jonas Boel | Arne Boonen
Leen Broeckx | Katrien Caris
Ann Cassano | Leen Danckaert
Stijn Decock | Hilde Lavigne
Isabelle Keirens | Paula Michiels
Isabel Pouset | Karel Reynaerts
Joris Swinnen | Bert Van Puyenbroeck
footage courtesy by
ABCNews VideoSource, New York
Archive Films, New York
Arkeion, Paris
Grinberg Film Libraries, New York
Kunstencentrum STUK, Leuven
Institut National de l'Audiovisuel [INA], Paris
National Archives at College Park, Maryland
excerpts from
White Noise [Don DeLillo, 1984-1985] & Mao II [Don DeLillo, 1991] are used by permission of the author and the Wallace Literary Agency Inc.
Thanks to...
Laurence Abraham, Argos, Berto Aussems, Nicolas Bacou, Fredo Bernardini, Christine Barbier-Bouvet, Harouth Bezdjian, Cis Bierinckx, Sylvie Chabot, Piet Coessens, Marie-Thérèse Cohen, Herman Croux, Véronique Dabens, Sophie Denize, Wim De Rop, Mieke De Raedemaecker, Benny Desmedt, Dirk De Wit, Clara Fon-Sing, Gillian at Colorlab, Jean-Paul Gratia, Valérie Gerbeaud, Geraldine Grimonprez, André Iten, Hedwig Jenear, Ty Kistler, Isabelle Kolégnako, Agnès Kourdadzé, Els Kuypers, Fabien Lagny, Piet Maris, Marine Meulemans, Mini Europa, Montevideo, Gunther Pauwels, Hilde Philips, Olivier Regnault, Etienne Sandrin, Shari Rothseid, Sint-Lukas Instituut Brussel, Sluik/Kurpershoek, Agna Smisdom, Daan Stuyven, Roman Théaudière, Leslie Thornton, Pieter Van Bogaert, Katrin Vandenbosch, Hans Van den Broeck, Barbara Vanderlinden, Paul Van de Velde, V-Tape, Hortense Wetsels, World Wide Video Festival, Eric Yaeger, Otomo Yoshihide and all those at the Centre Georges Pompidou & the Kunstencentrum STUK, who made this production possible.
Special thanks to...
Don DeLillo, The Wallace Literary Agency Inc.
additional music
I'm Every Woman [N. Asford | V. Simpson]
The Hustle [V. McCoy]
Lamento Cubano [G. Portabales]
Mi Son Cubano [G. Portabales]
with the aid of
Sony, Germany
Jan Van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht
post-production made possibly by
Avid Media Composer
TITLE:
November 1996
Moroni, Comoro Islands
HONEYMOONERS
VIDEOTAPE
HIJACK
HORROR!
TITLE:
Johan Grimonprez, 1997