The Photographers - Nikos Koundouros

It feels like the KLF thought of an alternate way to burn a million quid by putting that money into a leftist Greek film director's cynical vision of war and war correspondents. They are brought to the far off destinations by a person who could be funding the war. The war correspondents who report on the war are enhancing this bizarre and grotesque theatre of death by themselves being at times comically theatrical in their mannerisms.

It takes an interesting turn when one of the photographers - Sarah Blumendahl - meets her doppelganger and it takes a reflexive look into the nature of photography, war, cinema and death. As we see the tonnes of dead bodies laid out hidden in private cellars which no-one must know about, we look at the nature of photography is in many ways, like a gun itself, capturing life and death at the click of a trigger. It might seem inane and clichéd, and it no doubt is, but it is rendered powerfully in the hands of Koundouros.

The film is always off kilter though, swinging between despair and a carnival of death that dances it's way through an African tribal beat as if to highlight the absurdly international sense that war is everywhere. Everyone is involved in this theatre and they all know the consequences but as long as they're promised silver, they will continue this stupidity without questioning the morals of those they respond to. It's a testament to Koundouros that he understands the absurdities of war given that he was involved in the Greek civil war and it's a lasting memory that powers many of his films.

As I had watched a copy that dubs the film in stilted English, it throws off some of the power that the film might have had I watched it in its original settings. However I would not for one moment hesitate to say that this film lost any of its vitriol in the meantime.