On the Act of Looking: Reading Joshua Oppenheimer’’s Diptych: The Act of Killing and the Look of Silence

This collection analyzes Joshua Oppenheimer’s diptych The Act of Killing and The Look of Silenceas a cinematic event that invites interrelated questions on historical memory, truth and reconciliation, and the limits of documentary filmmaking.

On the Act of Looking affirms Oppenheimer’s use of fiction and manipulation as a technique to expose, contrary to the classic documentary form, not so much a reality behind the appearance of things, but how appearance as such can become a site of intervention or truth-telling. Contributors to this collection, including film scholars, art historians, historians, political scientists, philosophers, and Indonesian human rights activists, answer why Oppenheimer’s documentary films not only have received near universal praise and admiration, but also why this praise is often qualified by surprise and fascination.

Rex Butler is Professor of Art History in the Faculty of Art Design and Architecture at Monash University, Australia. He is the author of the following books: An Uncertain Smile (1996), Jean Baudrillard: The Defence of the Real (1999), A Secret History of Australian Art (2000), Slavoj Zizek: Live Theory (2005), Borges’ Short Stories (2010), Deleuze and Guattari’s What is Philosophy? (2015), A History of UnAustralian Art (2016). Butler is also the editor of What is Appropriation? (1996), Radical Revisionism (2005), The Zizek Dictionary (2012), Lars von Trier’s Women (2016) and The CityCat Project (2017).

David Denny is Associate Professor of Culture and Media Studies at Marylhurst University, USA. He has published in the journals International Journal of Zizek Studies, Theory and Event, Elohi Gadugi Journal; and is co-editor of Lars von Trier’s Women (2016).