Friendship's Death

Wollen's solo directorial debut (he previously codirected with Laura Mulvey) is a unique, deceptively simple science fiction film that revolves around the Palestinian situation in the 1970s. Although structured like a standard narrative this is more closely related to that neglected genre, the "film essay." The film opens with documentary footage from 1970's "Black September" in Amman, Jordan. Gunfire is exchanged in the streets, and the city is reduced to rubble. An airport runway is enveloped in a mushroom cloud of thick, black smoke as PLO terrorists explode a jetliner. Against this backdrop a woman, Swinton, is detained because she has arrived in the city witho...