Tonight the Texas Theatre will host a screening of the war documentary Restrepo, which will be shown in conjunction with the exhibition XXI: Conflicts in a New Century, currently on view at the Oak Cliff Cultural Center.

As we mentioned a few weeks ago, Restrepo director Tim Hetherington was supposed to appear at tonight’s screening, but the filmmaker and photographer was killed last month in Lybia. Now, the screening will be dedicated to the late-artist.

Over the weekend I bumped into XXI: Conflicts in a New Century co-curator Cynthia Mulcahy who said one of the things that interested Hetherington in the exhibition at the OCCC was precisely the fact that the show was not in a gallery or a museum, but in a cultural center – in the community. That setting drives home the fact that the show is not just about exposing the public to the horror of war, but seen in the context of the recent death of Osama bin Laden, the exhibit is an effort to wrestle the popular understanding of conflict away from the false narratives which we impose on conflicts in an effort to both understand and shield ourselves from war’s banal, degrading reality. Like Restrepo, the exhibit offers a view of war from inside the conflict zone, without the sense-making frame of a historic or heroic storyline.

Before Hetherington’s death, the exhibit featured an important collection of contemporary war photography. In the wake of Hetherington’s death, the exhibit feels all the more necessary.

Here’s my review of Restrepo and here’s my interview with Hetherington from last year.