The unwar film

While the pro- and anti-war documentaries remain locked in a tense stand-off, the one priming the pump for any given war effort, the other taking the cinematic counter-offensive, two further forms have emerged: what I call the “para-militarist” war documentary and the “unwar” documentary. This essay explores these two modes, the former whic comprises the latest addition to the militarist tradition, and the latter, which poses a laudable antidote to this trend. The “unwar” documentary, it is argued, works to undo very logic that subtends the war documentary, paramilitarist or otherwise, which operates within a direct sphere of “engagement” with militarism, never entirely outside of its bellicose imperatives.