Event

The New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU presents

EICHMANN & DRONES
An evening screening (two U.S. premieres) and discussion
at the intersection of art and politics

SATURDAY OCTOBER 29, at 6 PM
Tishman Auditorium at NYU’s Vanderbilt Hall
40 Washington Square South (bet. MacDougal & Sullivan), NYC

Free & Open to the Public
(no reservations; first-come, first-in)

On Saturday, October 29, 2011, starting at 6 pm, the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU will be presenting a screening of, followed by a conversation about, two short films that have a lot to say to each other, both as it happens by Israeli filmmakers currently resident in Berlin, and both standouts at the current Venice Biennale.  The two films are NACHT UND NEBEL (Night and Fog), by DANI GAL, about the disposition of Adolf Eichmann’s cremated remains by a group of Israeli soldiers following his 1962 execution; and 5,000 FEET IS THE BEST, by OMER FAST, about  U.S. military pilots based in Las Vegas directing lethal robotic drones half way round the world, and the nervous breakdowns to which they have been succumbing.  This screening will constitute the U.S. premiere of both films, and both filmmakers will be taking part in the program.

The films, each about twenty-five minutes long, will screen at 6 pm; following each film, the filmmaker will engage in a short conversation with NYIH director Lawrence Weschler.  Then, following a break, at 7:45 pm, a panel of discussants will convene to consider issues raised by the foregoing, everything from the legality of drone attacks and the possible culpability of distant pilots acting under military orders, to the ethics and aesthetics of the representation of death, killing, and the otherwise unthinkable. The panel will include:

PHILIP ALSTON, former UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions (2004-10); currently Professor and Co-director, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, NYU School of Law

ERROL MORRIS, the documentary filmmaker, whose pertinent credits, in this instance, include Mr. Death, Fog of War, and Standard Operating Procedure

ARYEH NEIER, a founder and former executive director of Human Rights Watch and currently president of the Open Society Foundations

MAGGIE NELSON, critic, poet, memoirist, CalArts professor; author of The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning; Bluets; and Jane: A Murder

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

DANI GAL was born in Jerusalem in 1975 and educated in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Frankfurt (at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Städelschule) and at Cooper Union in New York City (2005).  He currently resides in Berlin. His films have been widely shown throughout Europe (Amsterdam, Sofia, Barcelona, Turin, Stuttgart, etc.) and he was featured this year at both the Venice and the Istanbul biennials.  His principal representation is with the Freymond-Guth gallery in Zurich.  The film is described by Gal with the following:

NACHT UND NEBEL (NIGHT AND FOG; HD video, 21 minutes, 2011)
Fifty years ago on April 11, 1961, the trial of Adolf Eichmann began. He was tried in an Israeli court and charged for committing crimes against humanity and war crimes and was convicted and executed by hanging on May 31, 1962.  On the night between the 31st of May and the 1st of June 1962, shortly after the execution and the cremation of the body, a group of police officers sailed on a boat 6 miles out of the shores of Jaffa port. Their mission was to scatter Eichmann’s ashes into the international waters of the Mediterranean Sea.  The purpose of the highly secret mission was to ensure that there could be no future memorial and that no nation would serve as his final resting place.  Based on an interview Dani Gal made with Michael Goldman, a Holocaust survivor who was one of the policemen on the boat, the film re-enacts the scene of the group of policemen sailing on a dark foggy night with Eichmann’s ashes in a jug of milk.

OMER FAST was born in 1972 in Jerusalem, studied at Tufts University and Hunter College from which he received his MFA in 2000, and currently resides in Berlin.  He is a dual American-Israeli citizen.  He has exhibited widely over the last several years, with one-man shows at the Whitney, the Wexner, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Cleveland Art Museum, the Kunstverein in Cologne, and other museums all over Europe and America.  The Whitney show was widely praised by, among others, Holland Cotter in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/arts/design/08fast.html).  He is represented by GB Agency in Paris and by Aratia, Beer gallery in Berlin.  He has provided the following account of the current film:

5,000 FEET IS THE BEST  (Digital Film, 30 minutes, 2011)
The film is based on two meetings with a Predator drone operator that were recorded in a hotel in Las Vegas in September 2010.  On camera, the drone operator agreed to discuss the technical aspects of his job and his daily routine.  Off camera and off the record, he briefly described recurring incidents in which the unmanned plane fired at both militants and civilians – and the psychological difficulties he experienced as a result – before breaking the interview off.  Instead of looking for the appropriate news accounts or documentary footage to augment his redacted story, the film is deliberately miscast and misplaced:  It follows an actor cast as the drone operator who grudgingly sits for an interview in a dark hotel.  The interview is repeatedly interrupted by the actor's digressions, which take the viewer on meandering trips around Las Vegas.  Told in quick flashbacks, the stories form a circular plot that nevertheless returns fitfully to the voice and blurred face of the drone pilot - and to his unfinished story.
 

For further information, please contact The New York Institute for the Humanities: 212.998.2101 or nyih.info@nyu.edu.