The US has been leading the way to militarize and [weaponize space]…. During Republican and Democratic administrations the response to Moscow and Beijing [requesting a space weapons ban] was the same from Washington—NO. So Russia and China slowly but steadily…have begun to close the space gap—always continuing to urge the creation of a space weapons ban treaty. But Washington still refuses to even consider it. In fact, the US has gone the other direction—pulling out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), the Iran Nuclear Deal and today refuses to renew the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) that runs out in 2021. It’s all really quite simple—the US does not want to be bound by any treaties that limit its goal for “control and domination.”
— Bruce K. Gagnon (Space Alert!, Spring/Summer 2020)
Today we will discuss an early 21st century
Film genre (movement, school):
Cinéma enflammé.
With this cinema,
Gone
Are the director auteurs
(Compare, film noir).
We can no longer speak of directors per se,
Nor cinematographers, editors, actors, etc.,
Nor any quality of style or manner
That implies
Intention.
Cinéma enflammé consists exclusively of
Images of fire:
Burning buildings, burning streets,
Burning towns, burning cities.
The films are assembled fragments of cell phone video.
Sources are almost
Never
Identified.
No example we have of this cinema
Has any formal title,
Though certain of the films have acquired
Nicknames,
Given them by modern enthusiasts and scholars
To distinguish
One film
From another.
These nicknames refer to the duration of the film,
Such as the notable
2 minutes, 37 seconds
(To be screened later in class),
And
3 hours, 45 minutes
(Your viewing homework).
Or the nicknames may refer to
The cities
Seen in the films:
San francisco, Toronto, Houston, New York,
Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Bogotá,
Kinshasa, Cairo, Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Johannesburg,
Tokyo, Jakarta, Manila, Sidney, Baghdad, Tehran,
Tel Aviv, Guangzhou, Beijing, Ho Chi Minh City,
Pyongyang, Seoul, Paris, Barcelona, Reykjavic,
London, Moscow, Kiev, Budapest,
Etc., etc., etc.
These cities, as you know, no longer exist.
Yes, cinéma enflammé will be on the final.