The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World

Six former heads of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, sit down on camera for the first time and talk about what they did and what they came to think of it. They discuss targeted killings, interrogation, the occupied territories and the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Moreh lets the men speak, mixing their testimony with archive footage and animation, and the result is a document of surprisingly critical hindsight from the people who ran the machine.

Why it’s here: It's a film about the people who did the work questioning the work. What's punk is the shock of insiders breaking ranks, saying the system wins tactical battles and loses the strategic war. What's pedagogical is that it shows how a security state thinks about itself, and why a pattern of short-term wins can undercut long-term safety. Note: Israeli-made and Israeli voices only; no Palestinian speakers appear, so it must be paired with Palestinian perspectives. Some of the men's comments about interrogation are troubling and the film does not fully answer them. Companion to The Iron Wall and Three Worlds in the catalog and a tie to the Palestine bundle. Hebrew, with subtitles.

A four-part essay-series by the director of I Am Not Your Negro, following the sentence that Conrad's Kurtz wrote on his report in Heart of Darkness. Peck narrates a history of colonialism, genocide and white supremacy from Columbus to the American West to the Congo, mixing archive footage, animation and staged scenes. It is the story the textbooks soften.

Why it’s here: The series connects things the curriculum keeps apart: colonial violence, slavery, the Holocaust, and the ideas that justified each. What's punk is the refusal of the neutral tone, and the fact that it names the thread. What's pedagogical is that it can be paused, discussed and argued with. Pairs with Discourse on Colonialism, Orientalism and King Leopold's Ghost. Note: it is long, essayistic and dense, and some critics call its sweep too broad.