Recently I went to Normandy with my group of other American students in a big bus. It took a long while. It was interesting to go back to these places I hadn’t seen for 8 years or so, and I ended up crying like a baby, but it was a good experience.

The museum of peace near Caen is a poignant and moving chronology of the history leading up to, during and after WWII. Im not very good with the subject of WWII, I usually cant hold up in one piece for too long when theres a lot of discussion on the subject. Thankfully the museum was not nearly as depressing as it could have been, and it was really well done. There was a fascinating german propaganda film, which was made using stock footage, on the subject of D-day, which clearly tried to portray the germans as victorious. None of the footage was actually from Normandy, of course.

Anyway, in the museum there were many interesting war artifacts one in particular was a page from shostakovich’s 7th symphony. The symphony even accompanied a film on the subject of the invasion of lenningrad.

Later there was another film which I watched in the theatre there which was sort of an amalgamation of a lot of war and peace images. The construction of the berlin wall, the rebellion in the Czech republic, the tearing down of the berlin wall, the war in Vietnam, images of the peace movement, of peace accords etc, etc. Anyway they used film from Koyyanisqatsi and Naqqoisqatsi in the film, it was fun to see footage I knew… but accompanied to much less interesting music.