ICT, Loockhed Martin, Future Combat Systems, Full Spectrum Warrior, Kuma War. A devastating wave of terrorist attacks spreads across America, Europe and Southeast Asia, targeting specifically U.S. and U.K. interests, including embassies, regional corporate headquarters, and even western retail and restaurant chains. After months of intense hunting, U.S. intelligence tracks the source of the attacks to the tiny eastern nation of Zekistan. Zekistan was born seemingly overnight with the fall of the Soviet Union, resulting in a struggling third-world nation, torn by ethnic and sectarian strife, armed with a large surplus of Soviet-era military hardware and a critically weak government. Barely a year after its independence, the nation fell into brutal civil war between ethnic Zekis and settlers from surrounding nations. The Zekis were defeated by fundamentalist dictator Mohammad Jabbour Al Afad, who wasted no time in ordering the ethnic cleansing of the native Zekis. After the U.S-led operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, thousands of ex-Taliban and Iraqi loyalists crossed the borders of Zekistan seeking asylum by invitation of the nation’s dictator, Al Afad. It wasn’t long before the same terrorist training facilities and death-camps that the U.S. fought to remove in Afghanistan were operating again under full sponsorship by Al Afad’s government. After repeated warnings and failed diplomatic resolutions in the UN, NATO votes to invade Zekistan to depose Al Afad, eliminate the terrorist element, and stop the ethnic cleansing of the Zeki people. Pakistan grants the U.S. fly-through access to their airspace, and the operation begins. For several consecutive nights, carrier groups USS Carl Vinson and USS Ronald Reagan in the Arabian Sea launch thousands of sorties to take out air defense, armor, and enemy bases. With the dust barely settled, Infantry and Armor from seven NATO nations begin to land at captured air bases in southern Zekistan. The land invasion is underway… ...a media archaeology project by OVNI ARCHIVES: reading agents abu-ali & retroyou. 1999-2004.

"In 1996, I was staying in the village of Mankien in South Sudan to film the war which was taking place. At the time, I thought that making a film about an area struggling with such a severe conflict would almost have to be an act of duty. Once there, the reality appeared completely different from what I initially imagined it would be. The war that was all around me was not only a struggle between an oppressive government and a downtrodden minority but a latent conflict driven by power and economic interests. Back in Belgium, I felt overwhelmed by a strong feeling of helplessness and disillusionment to the point of never showing these images, up to now. A short while ago, I was told that the village of Mankien had been subjected to a massacre orchestrated by the Khartoum government with more than the slight complicity of Western oil companies. Closed District is not only a film about the war in South Sudan, but more about wars in general, about the death and distress that often ensues. It also raises the question of the filmmaker's place in a situation of conflict". (Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd)

The Margins of the Empire _ OVNI 2008

/ CONTEXT 1994 - 2020

Pierre-Yves Vanderweerd

Choque de Civilizaciones

Walkin' to New Orleans

United States of America.

From Beirut to... those who love us

United States of America,

Doing Time, Doing Vipassana

Le Beurre et l'Argent du Beurre

An inside view from the streets of the events that took place over one week in the Palestinian city of Nablus in August 2004. The camera takes us into the world of children who play at being soldiers in an army that has stones and motives as its only weapons. In the midst of Israeli gunshots and bombs, a dialog takes place with soldiers who sometimes seem more frightened than their own victims. The camera, with a group of international activists and paramedics, follows the soldiers as they search the city house by house. The international presence also acts as an "occupier-witness" of the zone of impunity in which Israel regularly acts.