Abounaddara on the Right to Image in Syria's Conflict

In an interview with artpress2, the anonymous Syrian film collective Abounaddara discusses their fight for the right to image during the Syrian revolution. They argue that both the Syrian state and international media have denied Syrians dignity: the state by bombing peaceful protests and barring journalists, and media by circulating degrading images of victims without context. The collective began producing weekly counter-information films in April 2011 and later launched a campaign in 2015, sponsored by The New School in New York, to establish a legal framework for the right to image. They critique the lack of an image policy for Syrian conflict footage, contrasting it with the protocol used after WWII for Nazi camps. Abounaddara advocates for showing horror minimally to avoid voyeurism, citing Jacques Rivette's 1961 text "De l'abjection" and Samuel Fuller's film of Falkenau concentration camp as models. They reject reducing the right to image to personal compensation, aiming instead for a political victory against a racist tradition dating back to the Lumière brothers' 1897 film "L'Assassinat de Kléber." The interview appears in artpress2 n°41, May/June/July 2016.