On a surface divided into triptychs, a blue planet, landscapes and animals follow one another. Then, humanity enters the scene. In a kaleidoscope of images, everyone seems to be agitated in the same basket. Humans are quickly doomed to destruction by technology. While the atomic bomb covers all three screens, a white man takes the floor. He tries to inscribe the destructive Western madness in a mythology that he borrows from others… We Are Become Death has the same obviousness and strength as its title. And yet, in the eight short years that separate us from the release of this short film, the great fear seems to have been transformed. Beyond the atom, we also fear, perhaps as never before, the slow industrial intoxication, the active or latent conflicts, the cataclysmic destruction caused by a deranged climate. In contrast to the Pasolinian rage, which is always in motion, the criticism here seems to be frozen, as if stopped in time. The images of a world that is collapsing call for other ways of thinking together, other oppositions to be formulated… stuck as we are on a small confetti in total overheating.

Martin Bonnard
Postdoctoral research fellow at McGill University
and labdoc member

Presented in dialogue with La Rabbia di Pasolini by Pier Paolo Pasolini and Giuseppe Bertolucci