War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception

Paul Virilio

This essay investigates the systematic use of cinema techniques in the
conflicts of the twentieth century. It is an approach that has never been
adopted before, or hardly ever. Yet the strategic and tactical necessities of
cartography were known long ago, and in the line from the emergence of
military photography in the American Civil War to today’s video
surveillance of the battlefield, the intensive use of film sequences in aerial
reconnaissance was already developing during the First World War.