Lacan Palestine (excerpt) 2012

Lacan Palestine is a found footage essay about the troubled couple of Palestine. This country without a country has been party to imperial projections for centuries, amply on display here as waves of armed crusaders, legionnaires, Mongols on horseback and biplanes issuing state edicts from the end of a machine gun. There are maps by the galore, drawn and redrawn as occupied territories are bartered in foreign capitals. Contemporary art activists Velcrow Ripper, Elle Flanders, Tamira Sawatzky, Dani Leventhal and others have generously donated their keen lookings and these have been swabbed with newsreels, desert spectaculars, historical recreations and intimate encounters. Mike Cartmell appears as the ghost of psychoanalysis, offering ruminations on killing the father, John Coltrane and why enjoyment is difficult. But never mind the critical mass, the heart of the movie remains its extended lyrical passages that collage a dizzying suite of couples – embracing, loving, hurting. A loveless love story starring Moses, Abraham and Jacques Lacan.