Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y

Against a backdrop of a chronology of airline skyjacks, the plot of Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y centers on an imagined dialogue between a novelist and a terrorist, based on passages from Don DeLillo's novels Mao II and White Noise. As the plot progresses, it becomes clear that with the increasing media coverage of terrorist hijacks, this power of producing an inward societal shock has been wrestled from the writer by the terrorist. They are 'playing a zero-sum game' where “what the terrorists gain, novelists lose!”{{cite book|last=Arey|first=J. A.|title=The Sky Pirates|year=1972|publisher=Ian Allan|isbn=978-0684125848|page=[https://archive.org/details/skypirates00arey/page/42 42]|url=https://archive.org/details/skypirates00arey/page/42}} We hear Mouna Abdel-Majid of the PLO tell a reporter, "you westerners, you don't understand ... we have to fight outside our territory and we have to bring the hope to understand our case."{{cite web|last=Grimonprez|first=Johan|title=August 1969 7-Minute Detour Over Occupied Homeland|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dH-ZE9iMIU|work=dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y}} The act of writing/terrorizing occupies the central paradox of democracy; it is the irreconcilable tension between the individual and mass culture.{{cite news |last=Lu|first=Alvin|title=Mind Terrorist|newspaper=San Francisco Bay Guardian|date=6 May 1998|url=http://www.johangrimonprez.be/main/Film_DIALHISTORY_Story_1.html}}

Throughout much of Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, this mass culture becomes synonymous with pop music and the ubiquity of television, particularly its news coverage. As this image-saturated society amplifies throughout the 1960s and 70s, it becomes apparent by the 1980s that the hijackers' political message has been itself hijacked by the media. Whereas in the 1960s hijackers were portrayed as romantic revolutionaries, by the 1990s these have been replaced on television sets by anonymous bombs in suitcases. According to Alexander Provan, "The end of the film seems to suggest that the media is now the ultimate author of fictions that transform themselves into events as they're broadcast."{{cite magazine |last=Provan|first=Alexander|title=If you see yourself, kill him: Johan Grimonprez & Tom McCarthy interviewed by Alexander Provan|magazine=Bidoun Magazine|date=July 2009|volume=18|pages=32–9|url=http://www.johangrimonprez.be/main/Film_DAIL_HISTORY_Interview.html}} Correlating with a steep rise of the level of violence used, this depersonalization of the terrorist is merely the accommodation of terrorist spectacle for political gain.

The guiding visual thread through Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y is an almost exhaustive chronology of airplane hijackings in the world. From Raffaele Minichiello, the first transatlantic hijacker (1969),{{cite web|last=Grimonprez|first=Johan|title=First transatlantic hijack November 1, 1969|website=YouTube |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50XCil9n-J0}} to an anonymous and dying terrorist in St. Petersburg (1993),{{cite web|last=Grimonprez|first=Johan|title=Enter the Jetset and a New Word "Hijack!" 1958|website=YouTube |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mvZ4KjTnbI}} Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y charts a history of airplane hijacking, and illustrates how, as hijackers got progressively more television coverage, they became more and more deadly.{{cite book|last1=Asselberghs|first1=Herman |last2=Grimonprez|first2=Johan|title=Nergensland|date=October 1997|publisher=Dietsche Warande & Belfort |trans-title=Nowhere Land}} In this sense, the underlying theme is that the hijack was becoming itself hijacked by news media corporations.{{cite book|last=Leighton & Büchler|first=Tanya & Pavel|title=Saving the image: art after film|date=October 31, 2003|publisher=Centre for Contemporary Arts|page=121}}{{cite journal|last=Obrist|first=H.U.|title=Email interview with Johan Grimonprez|journal=Camera Austria|year=1999|volume=66}} Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y suggests that hijackers and television evolved a deadly symbiosis: on the one hand, with their protracted duration, hijackings allowed for enough time to the television cameras to be set up. The nature of live television allowed for a minute-by-minute update of the hijack as the situation progressed; this blurred the line between entertainment and tragedy.{{cite magazine|last=Provan|first=Alexander|title=If you see yourself, kill him: Johan Grimonprez & Tom McCarthy interviewed by Alexander Provan|magazine=Bidoun Magazine|date=July 2009|volume=18|pages=32–9}} Television coverage stressed the extraordinary nature of the unfolding events (first transatlantic hijack, first live TV broadcast of a hijack, first attack on a skyjacked plane, etc.) as the only material suitable for television.{{cite book|last=Öhner|first=Camera Austria|title=On Seeing, Flying and Dreaming|year=1999|publisher=Camera Austria|pages=27–30}} On the other hand, for terrorists seeking to inscribe their struggle in history, the hijack devoid of the mediatized image of itself lost all of its communicative power. With the airplane always on the move between countries and borders as if belonging nowhere, the hijack came to symbolize the transgression across a violent border towards a political utopia.{{cite book|last=Grimonprez|first=Johan|title=It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.|date=August 31, 2011|publisher=Hatje Cantz|isbn=9783775731300|page=226|url=http://www.johangrimonprez.be/main/Film_DIALHISTORY_Story_3.html}}

Inflight Magazine, a companion reader to Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, is a parody based on the safety instructions pamphlets and glossy airline magazines provided for the passenger's edification and entertainment. It functions as an artistic manual for hijackers, equipped with such essentials as a safety instruction card and a barf bag.{{cite magazine |last=Grimonprez|first=Johan|title=No M|magazine=Inflight Magazine|year=2000|volume=1|series=3775709932|isbn=9783775709934 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WrI0AQAAIAAJ}} It includes excerpts from William S. Burroughs (FORE!);{{cite book|last=Burroughs|first=William S.|title=Cities of the Red Nights|year=1981|publisher=Picador|isbn=0312278462|page=[https://archive.org/details/citiesofrednight00burr/page/12 12]|url=https://archive.org/details/citiesofrednight00burr/page/12}} Leila Khaled ("Weapons Gave Me Words"){{cite book|last=Khaled|first=Leila|title=My people shall live: Autobiography of a revolutionary|year=1975|publisher=NC Press|isbn=0919600298|page=12}} Bernie Rhodes ("These Ears of Crime"),{{cite book|last=Rhodes|first=Bernie|title=D.B. Cooper: The Real McCoy|year=1991|publisher=Univ of Utah Pr (T)|isbn=0874803772|url=https://archive.org/details/dbcooperrealmcco00rhod}} Tim McGirk (Wired For Warfare){{cite magazine|last=McGirk|first=Tim|title=Wired For Warfare; Rebels and Dissenters are Using the Power of the Net to Harass and Attack their More Powerful Foes|magazine=Time|year=1999|volume=154}} and Richard Thieme ('Beep' Theory),{{cite book|last=Thieme|first=Richards|title=Stalking the UFO Meme Internet Underground|year=1996|publisher=St. Martin's Press}} Jodi Dean ('No place like home'){{cite book|last=Dean|first=Jodi|title=Aliens in America. Conspiracy Cultures from Outerspace|date=March 26, 1998|publisher=Cornell University Press|isbn=0801484685|url=https://archive.org/details/aliensinamericac00dean_0}} among others.

Roberta Smith described the film as "exceptional for its juice and its stomach churning power".{{cite news|last=Smith|first=Roberta|title=Art in Review|newspaper=The New York Times|date=September 12, 1997|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/12/movies/art-in-review-069973.html}} "A Holiday From History", an essay by Slavoj Zizek was published in conjunction with the DVD release of the film with contributions by Don DeLillo, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Vrääth Öhner.{{cite book|last=Zizek, DeLillo, Obrist, Ohner, Grimonprez|first=Slavoj, Don, Hans, Vrääth, Johan|title=dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, A Holiday From History|year=2003|publisher=Argos Editions|isbn=9783775712675}}

New York composer David Shea wrote the soundtrack to this "disquieting reflection on contemporary history"{{cite web|last=GE|title=Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y|url=http://www.timeout.com/london/film/dial-h-i-s-t-o-r-y|publisher=Time Out London}}

Golden Spire 'Best Director', San Francisco International Film Festival.

Director's Choice at Images, Toronto International Film Festival.

{{Reflist}}

• [http://www.johangrimonprez.be/main/Film_DAIL_HISTORY_Books_ItsAPoorSort.html 'It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards' Book]

Category:Documentary films about terrorism

Category:1990s English-language films

Category:English-language documentary films