The Otolith Group hosted an extraordinary screening at the Tate the other day as part of their contribution to the Turner Prize; Henchman Glance by Chris Marker. Now I am a fan of Marker’s films, but this one has left me speechless. I’m still processing what I saw, so I’ll tell you the facts: In 1961 Nazi Officer Adolf Eichmann was put on trial in Jerusalem. As part of the trial the defendant was pulled into court during the darkness of the night, whilst only the officials were present and made to watch Nuit et Brouillard (below) the first documentary fiction of the Nazi concentration and extermination system. The director in change of documenting proceedings secretly kept the camera silently rolling on Eichmann’s face throughout the screening. Marker, then took this footage and inter-cut it with what Eichmann saw and heard. It’s not easy to watch, and I for one have never seen Holocaust footage like it. The work of course raises many questions, but for me I found that I measured my reaction to Eichmann’s, after all we were both watching. Where I flinched, Eichmann simply scratched; as my hands shot up to protect my vision from what I saw in Nuit et Brouillard, the counter-shot of Eichmann wiping sleep from his eyes disorientated me. Was this pure control hiding something deep below, or beyond cold. Where had Eichmann gone?

 Nuit et Brouillard, Alain Resnais, 1956

The Otolith group talk about their work for the Turner Prize nomination, 2010