Paradiso, XXXI, 108

Nothing can be heard anymore; the roar of our plane absorbs every other sound. We are heading straight to the world’s biggest display of soundproof fireworks, and soon we will drop our bombs.’ This film transforms Israeli military propaganda reels of the 1960s–70s into an absurd spectacle, exposing the violence projected onto an imagined Palestinian battlefield.

Kamal Aljafari: ‘This area of Palestine has been very affected both by using a large part of it as army bases for exercises and by creating settlements and, by doing so, changing the nature of the place. Where there is desert, in many places in the world, it has been used to exercise, to test bombs and finally destroy the landscape itself. In the material we never see the people: the enemy is always supposedly hiding behind the hills, or between ruins, but we never see it. Nevertheless, the soldiers continue bombing and manoeuvring and attacking again and again with their power forces. This whole thing that the enemy is not to be seen is also quite symbolic: it’s the way the Palestinians are perceived in many aspects of their life, as non-existing and temporary. Yet the “state” is set to look for them; in a way, the material [testifies to] this ideology, they are there and not there. They are not being recognised as human beings, and the army attempts at the same time to fight them, which is in itself very contradictory and prone to failure.'– Excerpted from Abla Kandalaft, Brasserie du Court team, Clotilde Couturier, ‘Interview with Kamal Aljafari, Director of Paradiso, XXXI, 108’, myDylarama, 1 February 2023.