Iron Butterflies

In 1997, Belgian artist and filmmaker Johan Grimonprez’s groundbreaking Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y brought raw Situationist energy to the traditional documentary in a powerful meditation on the history of airplane hijacking, seen through the lens of mainstream news media and the writing of Don DeLillo. With fans including Slavoj Zizek and broadly considered in retrospect to be a profound and almost eerie foreshadowing of 9/11, subject matter aside Grimonprez pushed the limits of how documentary itself as a form could be conceived.