The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), 2013–2014: Broadening the Window to Jihad

Regrouping as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State ends its allegiance to al-Qaeda with whom it enters into an open conflict (fitna) that revives its video production. In advertising itself to new recruits after the withdrawal of the U.S. occupation, while simultaneously trying to proselytize the civilian population in newly conquered territories through local exhibition, the Islamic State now broadens the window to jihad that is its video production: new full HD technology arrives in the media wing and broadens the screen, media workers experiment with visual tropes and thereby broaden the fields of meaning association captured in the image, and a broadened plan of editing patterns permits a deeper immersion in the cinematic universe. The previously established rules of film style stabilize among a new generation of media workers (that would remain largely unknown until the caliphate’s bloom and downfall periods), but are also further developed through experimentation with symbolism, music, and rhythmic editing. Most noteworthy is the Islamic State film's attempt at editing video into cinematic spectacle and presenting its narratives not only in the previously established journal format, but also through experimentation with visual narrative through tonal and overtonal montage. Simultaneously, this film is repurposed to announce a caliphate through the developing utopian gaze (that now includes dimensions of social realism in weekly journals) and coerce the local population in Syria and Iraq into subservience (through the return of the ultraviolent gaze in the jihadi epos Clanging of the Swords 4).