The article examines the use of documentary film as a tool of political intervention that enlists the resources of broadcast journalism and literature in the representation of war. Access to images is a determining factor in the shaping of public opinion and affects citizens’ political views about the waging of war. The private files of four freelance cameramen who provide footage for news agencies and television networks and covered the wars in Chechnya are the main sources for Yuri Khashchavatski’s documentary Prisoners of the Caucasus (2002). The film traces a connection between this contemporary representation of the war in the Caucasus and Tolstoy’s nineteenth-century narratives and denounces both how the war was conducted and the invisibility in the media of the suffering of civilian victims and regular soldiers. Connecting the stringers’ files to an earlier literary tradition is a way of claiming the political dimension of memory, a political exercise at the crossroads between the media and the arts.

本文探讨了纪录片作为政治干预工具的使用，利用广播新闻和文学资源来表现战争。图像的获取是舆论形成的决定性因素，并影响公民对发动战争的政治看法。四名自由摄影师的私人档案是尤里·哈什查瓦茨基 (Yuri Khashchavatski) 的纪录片《高加索囚犯》的主要来源，他们为新闻机构和电视网络提供镜头并报道车臣战争（2002）。这部电影追溯了高加索战争的当代表现与托尔斯泰十九世纪的叙述之间的联系，并谴责了战争的进行方式以及媒体对平民受害者和正规士兵苦难的隐匿。将特工档案与早期的文学传统联系起来是一种主张记忆的政治维度的方式，是媒体与艺术十字路口的政治实践。