photo : permission de l’artiste
The first few minutes of Sandy Amerio’s film DRAGOONED1 1 - DRAGOONED, a documentary by Sandy Amerio, France, 45 min., 2012. Produced by Sandy Amerio, Khiasma, and Olivier Marboeuf. Co-produced by the École supérieure des beaux arts de Nantes Métropole (www.dragooned.org). (2012) situate the viewer in familiar terrain — that of archival footage, specifically, a series of newsreelscalled “United News,” produced between 1942 and 1946 by the U.S. Office of War Information. This government agency managed propaganda and promoted patriotism in order to convince Americans of the necessity and validity of the war being waged across the Atlantic.
Black-and-white images with a classic voice-over;2 2 - Lemmy Constantine: singer, actor, and voice-over artist (www.lemmyconstantine.fr). film stock showing the effects of time; blurred, shaky images taken by a shoulder-held camera — the sounds and images in these propaganda scenes conjure up a heroism belonging to a distant past. Viewers readily accept that they are watching a historical documentary relating a little-known event from the Second World War: the capture of Le Muy in 1944 by the American soldiers of the 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment.
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