gvt final draft
TRANSCRIPT
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Addressing the Mediation of Images and Their Implementation in the Construction of Truth in the Works of Rithy Pahn
‘Images are never transparent windows onto the world. They interpret the world;
they display it in very particular ways; they represent it.’ (Rose 2001: 6)
‘Il n’y a pas de vérité, il n’y a que le cinéma. La révolution, c’est du cinema.’ (Panh 2013, 1:00:46)
Regimes of power produce discourses of truth, and this is never more evident
than in totalitarian systems like that of the Khmer Rouge. This is due to the inseparable
and cyclical relation between power and knowledge elaborated notably by Foucault, in
which power equates to the ability to establish which discourses of knowledge are held
up as true within society, and the truth produced in this way subsequently sustains and
justifies these systems of power (1975: 36; 1976: 112; 1976 in Gordon 1980: 93). In
Democratic Kampuchea this cycle of pouvoir-savoir manifested itself in an apparent lack
of visual evidence of the atrocities committed by the regime, made possible by
dictatorial power structures asserting the necessity and benefit of their ‘egalitarian’
social order while suppressing conflicting evidence of its barbarity. This perpetual
sequence of perpetrators producing knowledge and concealing victims’ testimonies
produced a régime de vérité in which genocidal practices could be exercised, yet
responsibility for them denied.
The difficulty of breaking this cycle is exacerbated in an age in which visual
evidence has become a way of certifying experience and a lack thereof suggests the
non-existence or even denial of that experience (Sontag 1977: 6). Belief in the power of
images to accurately and truthfully represent realities facilitated the continued
dismissal and denial of the horrors of the regime and allowed the influence of the
Khmer Rouge dictatorship to persist even after its fall, as the reality it had built seemed
insubvertible. Visual documentation of the regime’s activity consisted primarily of
propaganda, which only served to support the ‘truth’ it had fabricated, while the lack
and concealment of photographic or filmic evidence of the atrocities suffered by its
victims seemed to hinder any possibility of undermining this dominant discourse. This
lacuna left Cambodia at risk of never being able to move pass the practice of genocide
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denial or repression to confront the horrors that had been inflicted upon it, and thus
never being able to ensure justice, reconciliation or progression.
However, film director and survivor of the Khmer Rouge Rithy Panh repeatedly
challenges the ‘official truth’ and documented history of Democratic Kampuchea
through cinema. He exploits the inadequate visual evidence left to him and presents it
in new contexts in order to meditate upon the ‘truth claim’ of images (Beattie 2004: 10)
and the ways in which they enter into the production of knowledge. Throughout his
works Duch, le maître des forges de l'enfer (hereafter Duch, le maître) and L’image
manquante, Panh refines his approach to this task in order to ultimately train the
viewer in a critical, active analysis of imagery.
Duch, le maître aims to disintegrate the master narrative established by the
Khmer Rouge and supported by its propaganda through the use of diverse sources of
evidence and testimony. These multiple and conflicting documentations of life under
the regime contrast the perspectives of perpetrator and victim to reveal discrepancies
that undermine the credibility of the state-constructed ‘truth’. The documentary style
film consists primarily of interviews with infamous S-21 prison leader Comrade Duch, a
war criminal undergoing trial for crimes against humanity at the time of filming due to
his involvement in the Tuol Sleng torture and detention centre. By referring to the
supporting novel L’élimination for concrete insight into what Panh aims to achieve
through these interviews, we discover that ‘[il] ne fabrique pas l’événement. [Il] crée
des situations pour que les anciens Khmers rouges pensent à leurs actes. Et pour que les
survivants puissent dire ce qu’ils ont subi’ (2011: 17, 78).
However, throughout the course of his work Panh becomes increasingly aware
of the slipperiness of Duch’s testimony (2011: 95), of his frequent unwillingness to
admit wrongdoing and of his blatant denial of participation in crimes. A cycle of
assertion and negation thus arises at multiple points throughout the documentary and
the novel, wherein the perpetrator is continually forced to defend himself against
evidence contradictory to what he maintains to be true. ‘Je n’ai jamais interrogé moi-
même… je suis la dirigeant, j’enseigne la théorie’ (00:44:39), Duch asserts in the film,
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despite the assurance of a prison guard in the following scene: ‘j’ai vu Duch intérroger
un prisonnier’ (00:46:06). ‘Je lui soumets ainsi une photographie, prise à l’époque par
un des photographes de S21’, Panh recounts in the novel, ‘on distingue parfaitement
des taches de sang par terre et sur le mur. Duch me répond qu’il na jamais vu de sang
dans les bâtiments’ (95). Even when faced with testimonies that undermine his own,
then, Duch continues to believe his word is indestructible: ‘on me repousse à connaître
les contre-vérités… le témoin peut continuer a parler [mais] aucun document ne preuve
ça’, he declares (00:31:02-00:31:52) he responds defensively to accounts of immoderate
violence in the M13 torture centre, continuing his denial of witness or participation in
torture activities in Panh’s written account: ‘si on me force à dire la non-vérité, ça je
refuse. Ja fais une dernière déclaration, pour la dernière fois et publiquement: je n’ai
jamais torturé’ (134).
He seems impervious to the materials meticulously gathered and presented by
the author-director, the stacks of photos, handwritten reports and video recordings
intended to disable his subject from skirting around the truth and assert: ‘attention, je
ne sais plus que tu ne crois, ne me mens pas’ (2011: 77). He even blatantly admits to his
evasion, saying that ‘parfois, on refuse de dire la vérité, on en dit la moitié et on enterre
la moitié. Parfois on transforme – dans un intérêt, parce qu’on a peur, parce que… on a
honte’ (01:36:03). Having reached this impasse, in which Duch’s lies and ommissions
‘constituent, à force, une négation du crime’ (123), Panh adjusts his approach, and
though he maintains that he ‘ne cherche pas la vérité, mais la parole’ (14) his montage
editing attests to a different aim. Precisely through the immediate contrast of Duch’s
statements with contradictory testimonies or evidence, and by cutting and editing his
speech, by exploiting the ‘jeu de répétitions, de croisements, des échos ’ (242), Panh
undermines the truth constructed by the perpetrator to replace it with a new truth, a
truth attesting to victims’ perspectives and experiences.
For example, when Duch affirms the restrained, deliberate actions of the
torturers in S-21, of torturer Mam Nay who ‘savait frapper avec reflection…
modérément ’ (00:28:33), Pahn directly follows this account with that of a disagreeing
witness: ‘je l’ai vu exécuter un homme avec un AK47’ (00:29:45) he counters, describing
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the terrorization of onlooking prisoners who were covered in the victim’s blood.
Sometimes the director insinuates the untruth of Duch’s words simply by layering them
over conflicting images: while disputing the witness’s claims of this bloody execution for
example, in which the prisoner was tied to ‘le poteau de la victoire’ in a measured
preparation for the act, Panh provides a fleeting image of a young, thin boy with hands
behind his back, wrapped around a familiar stake (00:31:47).
‘Il n’y a qu’une vérité’ (2011: 242) becomes his new outlook, his new approach
to representing the regime. And though his revelation of multiple perspectives serves to
prove that the ‘truth’ related by the Khmer Rouge was never absolute and unmodified,
rather intentionally constructed through the suppression of nonconformist discourses ,
his cinematic resistance attacks only the surface of the problem. In playing off truth
against lie Panh ultimately begins to play off one fabrication of truth against another –
his work constructs and imposes a new régime de vérite rather than criticizing this
process as a whole, and thus fails to uncouple truth and power, merely changing the
source of power.
L’image manquante however refuses to make the same mistake, exposing the
mediation inherent within photography and film and disputing their illusion of accuracy
and truthfulness in order to reveal and undermine the process of truth construction. In
this way he demonstrates ‘how lies function as partial truths to both the agents and
witnesses of history's trauma’ rather than deconstructing and rebuilding discourses of
truth, and can thus train the viewer out of his habitual belief that images are windows
onto reality, encouraging a more critical visual methodology (Rose 2001: 5, 15, 32).
In order to understand how Panh undermines the truth assumption of
photography and film however it is firstly important to clarify why it is that we
habitually consider images as reliable evidence of truths, and why we live in an age in
which ‘looking, seeing and knowing have become perilously intertwined’ (Jenks 1995:
1). Our belief that such images depict realities and thus provide irrefutable evidence of
truth stems principally from what Peirce labeled the ‘indexicality’ of the image (1984).
He noted that photographs ‘are in certain respects exactly like the objects they
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represent’ (1998: 5), visual likenesses of their content that possess a degree of accuracy
and ‘truthfulness’ that other, iconic signs cannot attain (Sadowski 2009: 1). This
verisimilitude gives them the illusion of being traces, miniature pieces of reality that
pass for incontrovertible truth that something has happened, since there is always a
presumption that ‘something exists, or did exist, which is like what is in the picture’
(Sontag 2001: 2, 3). In the case of Democratic Kampuchea, this assumption was a
significant factor in facilitating the dismissal and denial of the horrors of the regime, as
propaganda served as concrete, tangible proof of what life was like under Pol Pot’s
dictatorship, and a lack and suppression of visual evidence to the contrary undermined
victims’ testimonies of famine, deprivation and torture.
However, this perspective oversimplifies the nature of photography and film and
the power they have to interpret and mediate reality, constructing truths rather than
reflecting them. Sontag directly challenges the common presumption of veracity and
accuracy associated with these mediums, explaining that ‘although there is a sense in
which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as
much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are’ (2001: 4). She
argues that the camera both interferes with and interprets the scene it captures,
altering reality by intruding on the event and thus changing how it transpires or evolves,
and consciously framing incidents in order to capture specific perspectives and so
recount particular stories (2001: 8). Rose furthers this argument, noting that an
additional layer of mediation is present even after pictures are captured since the
meanings of an image are not only technologically and compositionally but also socially
determined (2001: 32), meaning the discourses into which these images are
subsequently assimilated equally alter their interpretation.
Panh is acutely aware of these levels of mediation, and aims to promote
recognition of them in his work to lend to the force of his argument rather than let
them control it. His skill in undermining the discourse in which an image has become
embedded and with which it seems irreversibly linked, allowing a single, reductive
interpretation of its meaning, is demonstrated strikingly in L’image manquante. The
conflicting combination of documentary conventions and surreal imagery in the film
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aims to critique the truth claim of images and tactics used to transcribe hegemonic
ideologies and construct truths.
Traditionally, the claim or assertion at the centre of documentary depictions is
that their content is a factual depiction of reality and their representation of the world
is verifiable and accurate (Beattie 2004: 10). This forms a trust relationship between
production and reception (2004: 11) that leads viewers to approach such works with
expectations regarding their authenticity and veracity (2004: 12). Panh subverts these
conventions and our ingrained trust in them specifically to discourage our uncritical
acceptance of the information presented to us, firstly by employing but modifying
documentary conventions such as the use of the authoritative voice of a seemingly
omniscient narrator. Throughout L’image manquante the guiding commentary
therefore does not dictate what we should believe based on what we are seeing, rather
encourages an enquiring, sceptical approach to the images.
The voice alternates between explicitly questioning the reliability of the footage
it narrates, sarcastically confirming the gloriousness of the Khmer Rouge as reflected in
these images to expose their unreliability, and simply relaying the assurances provided
by the perpetrators about the success of their regime for viewers’ contemplation and
dispute. Thus, while Panh deploys propaganda footage in the exposition of the past, he
does not give it authority (Mullen 2014), rather explicitly and repeatedly interrogates its
‘evidentiary status’ (Torchin 2014: 38). For example, at 1:04:24 the voiceover enquires
of an apparently realistic, state-produced clip: ‘ces sacs de riz… étaient-ce des
accesoires de cinéma, des sacs de sable?’, contemplating the apparent wealth of
supplies that victims of the regime somehow never benefitted from, and encouraging
viewers to equally question this discrepancy. The narration continues to prompt us to
look beyond surface impressions, closely analysing another clip that appears to flaunt
the efficiency and success of the Kampuchean workforce to identify that that:
‘À bien regarder dans ce mouvement, on voit la fatigue, les chutes, les
visages maigres, on voit la cruauté, on voit que certains ne peuvent
plus travailler’ (0:54:15).
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At times, the narrator provides viewers no guidance at all, rather encourages them to
dispute his remarks: ‘les récoltes sont glorieuses, il y a du grain… je vois enfin la
révolution qu’on nous a tant promise!’ (1:03:25) he declares, as scenes of lush rice fields
and apparently healthy workers are presented to the audience – an invitation to draw
the same conclusion as he does, that this revolution ‘n’existe qu’en images’ (1:03.30).
Finally, he offers pure information for our consideration and assessment:
‘Voici ce qu’en dit Pol Pot: actuellement nos coopératives dont des
unités de collectivisme déjà solides, en politique, en esprit, capable
d’accomplir toutes les directives de l’Angkar… ces coopératives vivent
une existence parfaite en terms de nourriture, de santé, d’hygiène, de
culture, d’études, d’éducation’ (1:05:25)
With these techniques Panh urges us to challenge hegemonic perspectives, contest
dominant discourses established by dictatorial structures and instead think critically and
independently, exploring images and declarations and interrogating them rather than
assimilating them as they are presented.
Panh’s defiance of documentary expectations extends further still to his
rejection of perceptual and observational realism (Beattie 2004: 15, Jordan 2013). Such
styles accentuate and exploit the ‘truth claim’ of photographic and filmic images to
render their arguments and claims persuasive (Beattie 2004: 14), using the perceived
indexicality of images to propose a single, simplified argument based on their content.
Using these techniques gives the illusion that the images presented are completely
unmediated, distracting from the inherent artifice of the medium and discouraging
critical interpretation. Panh’s chosen modes of representation, conversely, draw explicit
attention to the fabrication of the film. He firstly highlights its physical construction
through the use and uncensored modeling of clay effigies and elaborate dioramas, and
the employment of meta-cinematic devices that expose the films production, such as
‘behind the scenes’ glimpses of scenes being shot.
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Even from the opening scenes of the film Panh familiarizes the viewer with
cinematic materials, depicting tangled stacks of spoiled filmstrips and rusty canisters
(00:00:10), to immediately encourage a dialogue on the processes of creation involved
in filmmaking. To assure the exposure of this fact he even incorporates meta-cinematic
scenes – the dancing lady, who appears at the beginning of the film (00:01:00) and
mesmerises the young clay Panh in later scenes (00:36:52), is exposed as the product of
a film set. Her elegance and quiet isolation, which make the clip so entrancing, are
starkly contrasted with the presence of crowds of spectators in the previous diorama
(00:35:03 onwards), a director instructing her movement over megaphone, lights and
cameras perfecting the angles and ambience of the sequence. Panh’s most notable
metaphor for cinematic ‘construction’ however is his persistent use of clay figures and
their uncensored modelling. Throughout the film the viewer is candidly confronted with
the carving and painting of these miniature effigies, which he then immediately sees
performing roles in the following scenes (00:03:03, 00:12:15), producing a commentary
on the manipulation of material in the production of knowledge.
Moreover, he exposes the documentary’s cinematic composition and editing,
called to attention by the surreal, layered superimposition of music or images and the
manifest stitching together of photographs to create panoramic frames . At 00:06:16 for
example, clay floating figures are clearly edited into the scenes, and no attempts are
made to liken them to their backdrop – their bright colours and cartoonish shapes
provide a striking contrast to the aged, black and white footage of real human activity.
The unrealistic nature of these scenes is further reinforced at times by their
unconventional panoramic backgrounds, formed by simply connecting archival
photographs of Phnom Penh in an unmerging string. These images stubbornly refuse to
blend into one believable backdrop – the edges of buildings are matched up to the
branches of trees, and black and white photos are placed alongside red-tinted, sepia
ones (00:06:49, 00:06:53). Finally, Panh’s use of extradiegetic sound serves to ridicule
the ‘truth claim’ of the propaganda images over which it is played. This is particularly
notable at 01:01:13, when the upbeat disco music from the previous scene bleeds over
into the next, making the actions of flag-waving, gun-wielding citizens seem like
dancing. The comic effect this achieves in fact conveys a serious message – that what is
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seen can be adapted to serve any need, and thus should not be instantaneously taken
as true.
By problematizing the notion of documentary filmmaking through these
combined techniques, Panh is able, by extension, to problematize the notion of
producing truth. Williams suggests that postmodern documentaries ‘cannot reveal the
truth of events, but only the ideologies and consciousness that construct competing
truths – the fictional master narratives by which we make sense of events ’ (1993: 13),
and this is exactly what Panh’s film does. He recognises that ‘the process of developing
a world view that differs from the dominant world view requires active intellectual
work’ (Ladson Billings in Strega 2015: 121), and so strives to provide the tools for such a
deconstruction of hegemonic discourses. In this way, he does not fall into the trap of
playing off truth against lie, or playing off one fabrication against another, ‘rather, [he]
show[s] how lies function as partial truths to both the agents and witnesses of history's
trauma’ (Williams 1993: 17).
Panh’s cinematic techniques and style epitomize what Rose defines as a critical
approach to imagery, ‘an approach that thinks about the visual in terms of the cultural
significance, social practices and power relations in which it is embedded’ (2001:3), and
it is by using this critical methodology that he is therefore able to initiate a discussion
that invites victims to participate in the creation of a new politics of truth while
discouraging the idea that any such new régime should be absolute. More importantly
still however, he imparts the tools for this approach to viewers, and in this way, his film
can serve as instrument of knowledge with the capacity to hinder the future possibility
of hegemonic discourses of truth and the subsequent perpetuation of totalitarian
regimes. By familiarizing the audience with the mediation inherent within visual
imagery, Panh thus contributes to an important subversive discourse that may
ultimately modify our relationship with images.
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Bibliography Primary Sources: Panh, Rithy & Bataille, Cristophe (2011) L’élimination, Paris: Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle
Panh, Rithy (dir.) (2011), Duch, le maître des forges de l’enfer, France: Catherine Dussart
Productions, Institut national de l’audiovisuel, France Télévisions, Bophana Production Time marks correspond to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaWParqYqso
Panh, Rithy (dir.) (2013), L’image manquante, France: Catherine Dussart Productions, ARTE France, Bophana Production
Books and Chapters from Edited Collections
Beattie, Keith (2004), Documentary Scenes: Non-Fiction Film and Television, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Foucault, Michel (1975), Surveiller et punir , Paris: Éditions Gallimard available at:
https://monoskop.org/images/2/22/Foucault_Michel_Surveiller_et_Punir_Naissance_de_la_Prison_2004.pdf
Foucault, Michel (1976), ‘La Fonction politique de l’intellectuel’, Dits et Écrits Tome 3
Text No. 184, pp. 109-114 available at:
https://monoskop.org/images/3/3b/Foucault_Michel_Dits_et_ecrits_3_1976-1979.pdf
Gordon, Colin (1980) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977 By Michel Foucault, New York: Pantheon Books. Gunning, Tom (2008), ‘What’s the Point of an Index? or, Faking Photographs’, in Beckman & Ma (eds.) Still/Moving: between Cinema and Photographed, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 23- 40. Hamilton, Anne (2013), ‘Ethics and Aesthetics in the Cinema of Rithy Panh’, in Bangert, Gordon & Saxton (eds.) Holocaust Intersections: Genocide and Visual Culture at the New Millennium, Oxford: Legenda, pp. 170-190. Jay, Martin (1993), Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century
French Thought, London: University of California Press.
Jenks, Chris (1995), Visual Culture, London: Routledge. Juhasz, Alexandra & Lebow, Alisa (eds.) (2015), A Companion to Contemporary
Documentary Film, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Inc. Levinson, Paul (1997), The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution, London: Routledge.
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Peirce, Charles S. (1998), The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, Vol. 2, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Rose, Gillian (2001), Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials, London: SAGE Publications.
Sontag, Susan (1977), On Photography, New York: St Martins Press.
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Indigenous, and Anti-oppressive Approaches, Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc., pp. 119-152.
Tsang, Hing (2013), Semiotics and Documentary Film: The Living Sign in the Cinema,
Berlin: Walter der Gruyter Inc.
Articles and Papers
Boyle, Deirdre (2009), ‘Shattering Silence: Traumatic Memory and Reenactment in Rithy
Panh's S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine’, Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, Vol. 50, No. 1/2, pp. 95-106. Hamilton, Anne (2013), ‘Witness and Recuperation: Cambodia’s New Documentary Cinema’, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, Vol. 39, No.1, pp. 7-30.
Lamy-Rested, Elise (2014), ‘Dénier, théoriser, éliminer : le « travail » de Duch Sur
L’élimination de Rithy Panh avec Christophe Bataille’ Texto ! Textes & Cultures, Volume XIX, No. 1, pp. 1-7.
Norindr, Panivong (2010), ‘The Sounds of Everyday Life in Rithy Panh's Documentaries’, French Forum, Vol. 35, No. 2/3, pp. 181-190.
Prince, Stephen (1996), ‘True Lies: Perceptual Realism, Digital Images, and Film Theory’ Film Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 3., pp. 27-37.
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Torchin, Leshu (2014) ‘Mediation and Remediation: La parole filmée In Rithy Panh’s The Missing Picture (L’image Manquante)’, Film Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 1, pp. 32-41.
Williams, Linda (1993), ‘Mirrors without Memories: Truth, History, and the New Documentary’, Film Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 3, pp. 9-21.
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Online Resources Bradshaw, Nick (2015), ‘Memories of Murder: Rithy Panh on The Missing Picture’ available at: http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/interviews/memories-murder-rithy-panh-missing-picture (accessed 20 April 2016)
Hoffman, Jordan (2013), ‘Cannes Review: The Missing Image’ available at: http://www.mtv.com/news/2770697/the-missing-image-review/
(accessed 21 April 2016) Jordan, Randolph (2003), ‘The Gap: Documentary Truth Between Reality and Perception: The Notion of Documentary Truth’, Off Screen, Vol. 7, No. 1 available at: http://offscreen.com/view/documentary#ref-25-a (accessed 20 April 2016)
KMThomas (2006), ‘The Battle of Algiers: Image and the Construction of ‘Truth’’
available at: https://kmthomas.wordpress.com/
(accessed 17 April 2016)
Mullen, Pat (2014), ‘DiverCiné Review: 'The Missing Picture'’ available at: http://www.cinemablographer.com/2014/03/review-missing-picture-i-
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Radsen, Rune Bruun (2015), ‘When Fiction Points The Finger – Metafiction in Films and TV Series’ available at: http://www.kosmorama.org/ServiceMenu/05-English/Articles/When-fiction-points-the-finger.aspx
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Appendix: Duch, le maître des forges de l’enfer (2011):
Boy tied to stake 00:31:47
Surrounded by documents
00:28:33, 1:18:51
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L’image manquante (2013):
Clay effigies being painted 00:03:03, 00:12:15
Surreal superimposition of clay effigies over photo-stitched backgrounds 00:06:16, 00:06:53
Disco music overlayed over propaganda footage 01:01:13, 01:01:17
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Exposure of the dancing lady as a result of cinematic production
00:35:03 onwards, 00:36:52
Explicit portrayal of cinematic materials and of the creation of the film
00:00:10, 1:16:21, 1:33:34