6 - The Unimaginable on Screen: Repetition in Documentary Films on Trauma and Atrocities

Summary

Chapter six grew out of my curiosity about a term that appears in the preamble of the ICC Statute: unimaginable atrocities. If the court is indeed called to fight "unimaginable atrocities," how is it possible that considerable parts of the same statute are devoted to spell out and, in great detail, how these crimes should be defined? The chapter combines my curiosity about the ICC Statute with my questions about the use of film in legal education. Following Shoshana Felman, I argue that the ICC Statute should be read as pointing to the limits of what can be articulated in legal language. The unimaginable or unspeakable cannot, by definition, be captured in legal categories. However, it is possible to suggest what it means for something to be unimaginable. This is where art, including film, can play a role. The biggest part of the chapter is devoted to films that use reenactments to show what it means not to be able to fully articulate and understand historical trauma. The films, I argue, function as a reminder of the importance of the term used in the ICC preamble: the unimaginable atrocities that point to the limits of what law can articulate and achieve.