{"id":74,"date":"2018-01-10T11:58:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-10T16:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2018\/01\/10\/the-last-command-and-the-act-of-killing\/"},"modified":"2018-01-10T11:58:00","modified_gmt":"2018-01-10T16:58:00","slug":"the-last-command-and-the-act-of-killing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2018\/01\/10\/the-last-command-and-the-act-of-killing\/","title":{"rendered":"The Last Command and The Act of Killing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t<\/a>We’ve gotten a lot of new movies already in 2018, but one of my favorites so far is a set of three silent films<\/a> by Josef Von Sternberg<\/a>. While these films are campus use only (DVD 14852 – 14854), they are truly worth watching and can be viewed by students in our screening room.<\/p>\n

<\/a>One of the films, The Last Command, has an interesting connection to a 2012 documentary, The Act of Killing. In The Last Command, an exiled Russian general turned Hollywood extra lands a role playing a version of his former czarist self, bringing about his emotional downfall. Most of the film covers his acts during the Russian Revolution, including a love affair with a revolutionist. In the film’s stunning conclusion, he encounters shadows from his past as he reenacts them, and is transported by them.<\/p>\n

In The Act of Killing (HU DVD 12262<\/a>), the filmmakers examine a country where death squad leaders are celebrated as heroes, challenging them to reenact their real-life mass-killings in the style of the American movies they love. Again, film making becomes a kind of question, and a way of interrogating the cruelties and injustices of the past.<\/p>\n

These two films are both interesting examples of a very different kind of self-witnessing through performance. In a way, they echo community-based theater, including the focus on process in addition to final product. The act of creating is powerful: these films address the power of acting on an actor, even when acknowledged as an act. Both are highly recommended, especially for students of film and theater.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve gotten a lot of new movies already in 2018, but one of my favorites so far is a set of three silent films by Josef Von Sternberg. While these films are campus use only (DVD 14852 – 14854), they are truly worth watching and can be viewed by students in our screening room. One […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[107,311],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-documentary","tag-silent-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}