“Lysistrata.” “Guernica.” “Naked and the Dead.” “All Quiet on the Western Front.” “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Creators in every branch of the arts have focused on war. While such efforts haven’t ended conflict, they have kept alive the yearning for peace. In this tradition, Finn Harvor gives us “Wargasm XV.” Harvor continually revises this videopoem, hence the Roman numeral in the title.

About the Director

A professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, South Korea, Finn Harvor is an award-winning artist, writer, musician, and filmmaker. His articles have appeared in many journals including “The Brooklyn Rail” and “Canadian Notes and Queries.” He has presented to academic conferences in Oxford, Bath, Liverpool, Berlin, Seoul, and Osaka. His work has been shown in festivals in Korea, Ireland, the U.K., the US, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Australia, Greece, Pakistan, Serbia, Portugal, Russia, and India. He’s particularly interested in nature and the anthropocene, addiction and family dynamics (his late brother’s story), and technology and contemporary war. His favorite film genre is the videopoem. He labels his efforts  “authorial movies,” defined as projects in which one person creates—authors— all the elements.

About the Production

Here’s what Finn Harvor writes about “Wargasm XV” which was produced in 2022:

“This piece begins with footage shot very recently (April 21/22) of training for paratrooper drops that take place regularly at my university’s campus. The film then moves on to show the leaders of major military powers as crowds jeer or cheer them. Emboldened by the passionate emotions of the crowds, the leaders trigger missile launches. This excites the crowds more. But there is no happy ending to this form of destructive pleasure: the wargasm is not the same as the orgasm. It only leads to hell. Better still is just to focus on the beauty around us—the life that returns every year. War is never far away in South Korea as elsewhere on the planet. So why do so many people cheer it in when it happens? Why the Wargasm?”

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The editors of MobileMovieMaking have chosen “Wargasm XV” as the Mobile Movie of the Week.