The Film of the Islamic State: The Cinefication of Jihadi Video

The film of the so-called Islamic State is part of the still relatively opaque history of radical Sunni Islamist video propaganda, a field in which it is simultaneously its strongest exponent. Through its imports of aesthetics in the age of digitalization and the concurrent de-professionalization of film, this violent propaganda film has interestingly drawn attention for its seeming likeness to Hollywood film, an odd comparison that the Islamic State itself opposes through its own filmic antagonisms to commercial cinema. In an intermittent attempt at attacking cinematic illusionism, it has made increasing use of cinematic devices in order to communicate its violent and anti-humanist ideology – and has thereby entered a state of filmic self-contradiction. This book analyzes and uncovers the mechanisms and dynamics of ideological communication in the Islamic State’s videos through a combined historical and neoformalist approach, making them predictable for future researchers.

Yorck Beese is a film director, video producer and film scholar. During his time as a researcher in the junior research group Jihadism on the Internet (2017-2022), he has intensively researched the propaganda film of radical Sunni Islamism as well as other propaganda films. His fields of expertise include film analysis, propaganda film history, film aesthetics, and narratology.