Dial H.I.S.T.O.R.Y

This page contains information on a 1997 film that features some passages from DeLillo's work.


There's a art/documentary film out entitled Dial H.I.S.T.O.R.Y which utilizes passages from Mao II and White Noise made by Johan Grimonprez of Belgium.

The film was made 1997 and is 68 minutes long. Several reviews were quite good. You can now see for yourself: UBUWEB has the entire film online: Dial H.I.S.T.O.R.Y by Johan Grimonprez.

Here's a description from the SF International Film Festival:

If reality has been supplanted by the image, then violent acts can be seen as the retrival of a lost authenticity. Johan Grimonprez's gut-wrenching Dial H.I.S.T.O.R.Y. shows us one spasmodic attempt at reality recovery, the airline hijacking, and it throws in a mini-history of the revolutionary impulse as well. Assembled Frankenstein-fashion from exhumed newsreel footage of hijacking scenes, terrorist attacks and their gruesome aftermaths (and with a little "Do the Hustle" for good measure), Grimonprez's pseudo-documentary follows the flight path of skyjacking, concentrating on the glorious double decade of the 60s and 70s when violent assaults were as predictable as lost luggage. The cavalcade of crises is familiar: Tel Aviv, Athens, Tokyo -- each a distant image of some lethal act. The reductive details are often frightening in their simplicity: on one flight hijackers demand birthday cake and champagne for a flight attendant; on another the pilot orders sandwiches for his famished terrorists lest the slaughter begin. Grimonprez culls the writings of novelist Don DeLillo for the intermittent flight announcements; one compelling quote declares that artist have disappeared from the radar screen, having lost the air to terrorists who still have a grip on reality.


Last updated: 06-NOV-2008