Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War

In 1971 the filmmakers Wakamatsu Koji and Adachi Masao spent months in Lebanon documenting the training of the Japanese Red Army and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The result is a newsreel-style propaganda film in support of the Palestinian resistance and against imperialism and Zionism. They saw their film as a declaration of war, intended to involve the rest of the world in the liberation of Palestine.

Militant voice-overs about the need for a global armed struggle are combined with grainy, handheld footage of everyday life. This is based on the Foucauldian idea that power is largely invisible. The task of cinema is to expose these invisible power structures.

The film therefore focuses on landscapes and buildings, with shots of broken ceilings, crumbling walls and vast, barren landscapes. The filmmakers distributed the film independently across Japan on a red bus before returning to Lebanon to join the Palestinian resistance.