In his first feature-length desktop documentary, filmmaker, media artist, and critic Kevin B. Lee investigates the visual roots and afterlives of extremist propaganda. Through a forensic-style video essay, Lee traces the (neo)colonial and digital history behind the omnipresent terrorist imagery.

His starting point is Flames of War, an ISIS production circulating online since 2014, made in a Hollywood style that both fascinates and horrifies the filmmaker. This ambiguous fascination, more than the film itself, becomes an object of his inquiry: how do we, bodily, emotional, and moral beings, perceive and relate to such images?

Rather than adopting an analytical, external perspective, Lee positions himself inside his own desktop frame. Afterlives is an essay film par excellence: personal and self-reflective in its mode of inquiry, letting thoughts drift and questions exist without answers.

We follow Lee through virtual and physical environments, across different mediums – AI-generated images, digital archives, and artists’ work – and among those who resist this violence: artists, researchers, and activists.

Throughout, one question stands out: how can we research without “violent care”? How can we study terrorist violence without reproducing the colonial dichotomy it depends on, civilised West versus barbaric terrorist?

Afterlives provides a starting point for thinking differently about research and visual knowledge production. Lee treats images of terror seriously, engaging with a variety of materials on equal terms. Together with artists, researchers, and activists, Lee works to shape collective memory otherwise.

GVN