War at a Distance (Erkennen und Verfolgen) (2003) by Harun Farocki
Wednesday, November 4, 2026, 7:00 pm
Harun Farocki’s War at a Distance and Videos by Mahmoud Alhaj
Alternative Visions — Program 9
Presented in association with Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
Admission: $18 General / $12 Cinematheque Members
Event tickets here
Alternative Visions
September 9–November 18, 2026
This fall BAMPFA’s long-running annual series of historical and contemporary experimental film includes the work of dozens of artists across ten programs, beginning with a program of cinematic investigations into automation and AI with Gibbs Chapman in person. The series continues into November with a program of films made by members of the Oakland-based Black Hole Collective Film Lab. Brydie O’Connor is in person with her archival portrait of queer experimental film pioneer Barbara Hammer. The late Marjorie Keller’s intimate 16mm films have a rare screening to mark the publication of a new book about her work. Artist Naeem Mohaiemen presents and discusses A Missing Can of Film (2025) in conjunction with BAM’s exhibition Private Frontiers. A selection of works made by COUSIN collective artists, including Sky Hopinka’s 2017 consideration of the Dakota Access Pipeline protest and Lindsay McIntyre’s film about caribou and lichen—made using those materials in the photographic process—screen with Lebanese artist Christophe Katrib’s This Dissonance (2024). Harun Farocki’s influential 2003 essay film War at a Distance and Gazan artist Mahmoud Alhaj’s recent videos examine how perception can be limited in the context of war and/or conflict. (Kate MacKay, Film Curator)
Alternative Visions
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Alternative Visions, program 9: Harun Farocki’s War at a Distance and Videos by Mahmoud Alhaj
Introduction: Mark Minch-de Leon
Harun Farocki’s 2003 essay film uses archival and original material to interrogate expectations of the objectivity of contemporary photographic images, particularly those images documenting conflict and war. As Antje Ehmann observed, “The image is no longer used only as testimony, but also as an indispensable link in a process of production and destruction.” Gazan artist Mahmoud Alhaj’s work shares concerns with Farocki’s but emerges from lived experience of daily violence in Gaza, “especially under the siege and constant aerial surveillance,” leading to “an attempt to understand the technological structure of domination and its impact on the body, space, and memory.”
SCREENING: War at a Distance (Erkennen und Verfolgen) (2003) by Harun Farocki (Germany); digital, B&W/color, German with English subtitles, 58 minutes. Source: Harun Farocki GbR. The Right to See (2021) by Mahmoud Alhaj (Palestine); digital, color, Arabic with English subtitles, 7 minutes. Source: Mahmoud Alhaj. Control Anatomy (2024) by Mahmoud Alhaj (Palestine); DCP, B&W/color, Arabic with English subtitles, 17 minutes. Source: Mahmoud Alhaj.
TRT: 82 minutes