kino21 film series / HOW WE FIGHT Program 3: Terrorists

presented by kino21

Notes of a Kurdish Rebel
 by Stefano Savona (France, 2005, 78 minutes)
 November
 by Hito Steyerl (Germany, 2004, 24 minutes)

kino21's 5 program series, How We Fight: Conscripts, Mercenaries, Terrorists and Peacekeepers, presents international works that explore soldiering and depict the experience of war from the point of view of those on the ground. From Argentina, Russia, Iraq, Germany, France, Holland and the U.S., several of these films are US premieres.

We began in September with Iraqi Short Films, a brand new compilation of videos shot in battle by soldiers and militia members in Iraq. Subsequent programs include video diaries of the battlefield and pre- or post-combat rumination, extended observational portraits and interview-based works. There are depictions of Russian conscripts in Chechnya, PKK rebels in the mountains of Iraq, American veterans returned from Vietnam, and mercenaries and peacekeepers stationed across the globe, from Bosnia to Rwanda, from the Middle East to the USA.

Our third program in the series consists of two works that portray those labeled as "terrorists" —in this case rebel fighters in the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party). Stefano Savona's Notes of a Kurdish Rebel follows a group of young, idealistic fighters in the mountains of Northern Iraq as they prepare to cross into Turkey.

Hito Steyerl's November is a thought-provoking essay on the image of the revolutionary and the gesture of rebellion, as embodied by her friend Andrea Wolf. Both films are complex depictions of the desire to take arms against state oppression, and both suggest the central role of women as fighters in this revolutionary armed struggle.