On Terrorism Considered as One of the Fine Arts Peter Whitehead Whitehead composed Terrorism in Vienna between 2007 and 2008. These notes were written during the editing process, prior to the film's completion in 2009. I started making the film after the showing of my Film Retrospective at the Viennale in 2006, for two reasons. Firstly, I was inspired by the level of interactive interrogation with the mostly-young audiences and their clear understanding of the style, "language" and meaning of my films, especially the film I like most: The Fall. Shot in 1968. I decided it was time I made some kind of "sequel" (at least in "subject") to this film; the final film in my life—a kind of filmed MEMOIR. I had been thinking of making a film about Holography—holographic space-time and Ancient Egypt, new theories of consciousness, deriving from my novel The Risen. This was before I went to Vienna. My new idea then was to be more provocative, more committed, to finally make a film in the style I write my novels. Secondly, I met two young women at the Vienna Festival who could ideally be in such a film—and I decided that the city of Vienna itself was the best theatre-set I could ever find; a real-life "Alphaville." It was the perfect place to make a so-called "fiction" film, shot entirely as a film documentary. Rather that using The Risen as my starting point, I had to use my most recent novel, Terrorism Considered as One of the Fine Arts. The novel concerns an eco-terrorist assassination—and this would be the main theme of the film. One of the girls I wanted to film, Nina Erber, was in an all-girl punk rock band called "Who Killed Bambi," who sang English punk songs: in English. A second girl in the band, Alice Schneider, could also be in my film, as she was an actress acting in two stage plays: both about ecological issues. I ended up managing the band! (Not very well.) Another girl studying film, doing a [End Page 913] master's degree on Godard, agreed to be in my film. It was all looking good ... Alas—suddenly—in March 2007, I was struck down by a very serious disease and nearly died. Luckily I got back to England. I have a faulty gene and this disease had attacked me in 1968, and I have been crippled with serious arthritis ever since. This time the attack was even worse, attacking my entire immune system: it is an auto-immune disease, related to Multiple Sclerosis and Rheumatoid Arthritis called "Reiter's Syndrome." I couldn't stand, walk, or sleep—and was barely able to move. In a state of semi-paralysis, helpless, it took eight months before it slowly went into remission, by which time I had "lost" the film. I was very weak and two of the actresses were no longer available, so I abandoned the film. But then I met another Austrian girl—Sophie Strohmeir—an opera singer, and we did some tests. She was excellent. She brought me back to the film. So I stayed on for another three months earlier this year, and shot more scenes for a "possible" film. By this time I had material for three different films and Six Characters in Search of an Author! An impossible, hopeless situation. But I decided it might make a bizarre film ... The central plot (or hidden agenda) of the film concerns the first enormous act of state-sponsored terrorism—the blowing up and sinking of the Greenpeace boat, The Rainbow Warrior, in New Zealand in the '80s. Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira was murdered during this act by the French Government and their Intelligence agents acting as terrorists. I began to see the film as a REQUIEM, on film ... for him.1 At this moment in time, the film is being edited from a mass of conflicting themes, characters and situations. As the film is about "FEAR"—collective and individual—the deliberate creation of uncertainty and psychological "terror" by ruthless governments exploiting the terrorist threats—this "uncertainty" in the narrative will be no...