This program presents varied approaches to looking at war. Hassan Zbib and Olga Nakkas's My Friend Imad and the Taxi takes an aesthetic, urban point of view, using the city of Beirut as a stage where lonely characters drift. The third in a film triptych, Lonnie van Brummelen's Grossraum: Lefkosia was shot on the border between South Cyprus and Turkish-occupied North Cyprus, where photography is restricted; it explores the composition of the landscape along the current margins of Europe. Harun Farocki's Eye/Machine III addresses the automation of vision in the era of “smart machines,” “smart bombs,” and person-less cameras. It charts a kind of genealogy from the first automated images, photographs taken from airplanes to measure the accuracy of bomb drops in World War II, to the current ubiquity of mechanized imaging in the technological and commercial sectors. In Homage by Assassination, Elia Suleiman takes media coverage of the Gulf War as a point of departure to raise the issue of the never-ending Arab-Israeli conflict, reflecting on the futility of national and religious identities.

My Friend Imad and the Taxi (Mon ami Imad et le taxi) (Olga Nakkas, Hassan Zbib, Lebanon, 1985, 19 mins, B&W/Color, DVCam from Super 8, From Pierre Sarraf). Grossraum: Lefkosia (Lonnie van Brummelen, Netherlands, 2005, 13.5 mins, Color, 35mm, From the artist). Eye/Machine III (Auge/Maschine III) (Harun Farocki, Germany, 2003, 18 mins, Color, Beta SP, From Video Data Bank). Homage by Assassination (Takreem bil katel) (Elia Suleiman, Palestine/U.S., 1992, 28 mins, Color, 35mm, From the artist).