Under the artistic direction of Cuban Santiago Alvarez, the Grand master of agitprop was built in the 1960s and 70s a number of tendentious documentary films about the American Vietnam war - or rather, the US-Vietnam War America, as Alvarez 'sympathies lie quite unequivocally on the side of the Vietcong. Some, like Hanoi, martes 13 (1967), are in all respects masterly representatives of their genre, others, like La guerra olvidada (1967), takes the neighboring country of Laos in the view, make at least the opening unknown terrain deserves, others, like La Estampida (1971) , of the "headlong flight" of U.S. troops after a failed disastrously Invasionsversuch mit Häme und dubiosen historischen Analogien quittiert, sind schlicht ärgerlich. Fangen wir mit dem Ärger an, und arbeiten uns hernach zu dessen Sublimation vor: Die Tagline des grandiosen Hanoi, martes 13 lautet "Nosotros convertimos el odio en energia", überführen wir den Hass in Energie!
La estampida beginnt mit einer Fotografie. Das Gesicht einer jungen Frau, die wahrscheinlich Amerikanerin sein soll, ist durch einen blödsinnigen Grinser entstellt. Es folgt ein Zoom auf ihre weit aufgerissenen Augen, die bald das Bild füllen. Wer es bis jetzt nicht verstanden hat, wird in den nächsten zehn Minuten, die der Film dauert, reichlich Opportunity to consider again the same conclusion:, spinning helicopter, reactionary Country, one for the figure of fun animated Richard Nixon, decorates his helmet with a swastika, Jimmy Hendrix 'Zerrversion the American national anthem, the acousmatic instruction from the off, that "the Americans" more had dropped bombs on Vietnam than during all of World War II and photo galleries traumatized GIs - all means to us that the United States had fallen prey to the madness in their social totality.
quite different Hanoi, martes 13 that one of his first scenes in the vehement protest of the U.S. government's own population counter hit, designed to create a rhythmic cascade of police brutality. After Álvarez reacted in the short ad hominem to Lyndon B. Johnson - and so much was it, in the satirical tradition of John Heartfield, granted einspruchslos - he drives at his best. His description of the Vietnamese people as a gentle caring society, still in a state of emergency - the self in Hollywood's war propaganda is always a problem - it comes without collateral damage society in search of her peers. Extensive assembly sequences show lived and what is more, perceived collectivity. Only in fishing, at work at the field or in a Ausspeisungsstelle, then, qua imperceptible transition, in private. A sequence of shots in the rear cavort armed men shows tight wraps and girls and women who walk down the street, mothers and children, and finally, they rub their eyes, two hands holding soldiers. At the end of this sequence is completely incoherent, yet logically, the Close-up of a delicate hand painted in the manner of a conductor with each other gently touching the thumb and index finger concentric circles in the air interface to a bomb exploded, roaring planes, devastation, where the eye looks wounded, dead. First the bombs, not the state of exception, not the military superiority of the enemy, can a people that knows itself in the right, a little wear, there Álvarez us here ... not just to understand but to feel.
