The Natural History of Destruction
This documentary by Ukrainian grandmaster Sergei Loznitsa explores whether it is morally acceptable to use a civilian population as an instrument of war.
A nighttime bombing raid filmed from the air lights up the explosions far below. A sea of lights, like a Jackson Pollock painting in negative. There’s a perverse beauty to the images of destruction at the heart of this documentary about aerial bombardment, created entirely using archive footage. Nevertheless, director Sergei Loznitsa never lets you forget the underlying devastation.
Loznitsa, who has repeatedly shown himself to be a master of archival documentary, follows in the footsteps of W.G. Sebald, whose collection of essays bearing the same title criticize the lack of attention for the civilian victims of the Allied mass bombings of German cities during the Second World War. But Loznitsa avoids ideology and chronology: images of Allied and German bombings are used interchangeably in this painfully topical work on the nature and absurdity of war. (source: www.idfa.nl)
Please note that this film is English and German, with Dutch subtitles.