Hito Steyerl
November, 2004
DV transfer to DVD, single channel, sound
Duration: 25 minutes
Edition 2/20 + 2 A.P.
Hall Collection
Hall Collection
© the artist
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Hito Steyerl's film November (2004) unfolds as a documentary narrated by the artist, tracing the story of her close friend Andrea Wolf, first encountered as the triumphant heroine fighting injustice...
Hito Steyerl's film November (2004) unfolds as a documentary narrated by the artist, tracing the story of her close friend Andrea Wolf, first encountered as the triumphant heroine fighting injustice in a feminist martial arts film that the two friends partially completed in Bavaria, as teenagers. This prescient cinematic experiment takes on new significance several years later, when Wolf went underground and joined the Free Women's Army of Kurdistan, teaching the women martial arts and fighting for the Kurdish cause. Taken prisoner by Turkish security forces and killed, Wolf's image became circulated on a poster by Kurds in Germany as a symbol of resistance and freedom. Steyerl's film addresses the implications of the complex intersection of fact and fiction in Wolf's life, making evident that truth can be neither established nor expected in a world in which fictional depictions of reality are presented as documentary evidence. Steyerl depicts this fusion by intercutting shots of her and Wolf's early movie fight scenes, modeled on the 1965 American B movie 'Faster Pussy Cat, Kill! Kill!' with footage of Wolf interviewed in Kurdistan by local television, her image on a poster in a Kurdish demonstration in Germany, Kung Fu movie clips, and the funeral scene from a Bruce Lee film, released five years after his death, in which Lee fakes his own death so that he can go underground. The film used real footage of Lee's actual funeral, leading audiences to believe that the actor was still alive. The official position of the German and Turkish authorities that Wolf is still alive echoes this classic cinematic trope, casting doubt on documentary evidence by turning fact into fiction.
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