Little Flags

Featured in Paul Virilio's exhibit Unknown Quantity, Jem Cohen's short film Little Flags draws on footage he captured at a Gulf War victory parade in New York City (~1991).  

The film seems to be suggest two distinct parts. 

The first part is a loud, abrasive montage of close-ups shots: groups of people chanting and cheering, each looking on at some spectacle the film never shows us.  The camera (ie, Cohen) is on the move, sometimes spinning 180 degrees at the sound/reaction of the crowds and sometimes bumping into people as they try to weave between one another.  

Then the screen goes black and silent for a couple seconds.  

In this unofficial "second part" of the film, most of the crowd has left.  The city streets are covered with the parade's debris; new sets of pedestrians (apparently not there to see the parade) walk solemnly over the white mess, shuffling through it like snow.  Unlike the "first part," the camera relaxes into a few still, contemplative moments: papers whirl around and fall among the bases of skyscrapers, a man with a suit and briefcase walks alone down a long paper-covered street, a toddler sleeps through it all in a stroller as his mom stands motionless in the street.  The audio track too has slowed down to a drowning crawl, until the music fades on the image of a young woman sitting in the middle of another street.  And then the film ends with a man picking up little American flags  amidst the mounds of trash, while we hear the ambience of parade noise and, above it, another man chanting (almost robotically), "Let's all celebrate; 250,000 dead."