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

Vietnam veteran Raffaele Minichiello went down in history as the world’s first transatlantic airline hijacker when in 1969 he forced a TWA pilot at gunpoint to fly from California to Italy. A great many revolutionaries, adventurers and terrorists have followed his example. is a brief history of plane hijacking made by Belgian artist Johan Gimonprez. This video essay premiered in 1997 at the Documenta X arts exhibition, where it proved to be his international breakthrough. The mix of news footage, science fiction clips, found footage and home videos shows how Minichiello’s imitators became increasingly extreme, and their actions more deadly. As well as being about terrorism in the pre-9/11 era, is perhaps even more about the ever-increasing influence of the mass media. It starts with a quote from Don DeLillo’s novel , in which a writer enters into dialogue with a terrorist. The writer argues that the airplane hijacker has displaced him in his ability to exert influence. Gimonprez, in turn, argues that radio and TV have hijacked terrorism. They have transformed it into a spectacle, which the director emphasizes by packing the soundtrack with sunny pop music. is disturbing and intense – and in the light of 9/11 surely also prophetic.