Skype Q&A with Naeem Mohaiemen!!
(Naeem Mohaiemen, Bangladesh/ USA/Japan, 2012, 70mins) This striking and hypnotic documentary — the first in a trilogy on ultra-left movements — by visual artist Naeem Mohaiemen, reconstructs the hijacking of Japan Air Lines flight 472 at the hands of the Japanese Red Army in 1977, during which the hijackers forced the plane to land in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Using the original sound recordings and surveillance video from the airport control tower, and a written transcript of the tense and cautious conversation between the hijackers and the hostage negotiator, the captivating and meditative doc presents a blow-by-blow account of the event. Mohaiemen interrupts the negotiations to take a trip back to his own living room, where he followed the events as an eight-year-old, hoping it would end so he could watch his favorite TV show.

As reviewer Wilson-Goldie (Bidoun) notes, United Red Army “delves further into the unintended damage that violent revolutionary movements wrought, articulating the need to address them critically, skeptically, even generously, but without nostalgia or romance, fascinated but not seduced.”