Omer Fast: "Continuity" | ART21 "Exclusive"

[Omer Fast: "Continuity"]

Those moments are magical in film

when we have kind of a pure linear motion

that approaches something and reveals it.

But I'm interested in the stuff that gets
in the way.

With more and more and more questions,

you create, in a sense, a productive kind
of confusion.

And I think that's what I'm after.

I had a commission for dOCUMENTA

and they were also going to show this on TV.

I started to think about this, kind of, TV
movie

and this notion of the domestic interior that
TV is all about--

or at least for me--and that kind of middle
class obsessions

of showing the family

and showing the living room

and showing the kind of dynamic within a particular
family.

And I wanted to do it in the context of a
homecoming--

that is, ostensibly or topically, Germany’s
involvement in Afghanistan.

Except for, there isn't that kind of classical
development.

You don't reach a particular climax and a
denouement.

You have a repetition of these scenes and
these places.

It is increasingly formalized.

And having TV as the medium for
showing the story

has dictated a lot choices I made.

You have two parents who are middle class

who are doing materially well.

But something in their relationship is off.

There is a trauma,

but it's not the trauma that you think
it is.

It's the trauma of emptiness.

It's a, sort of, suburban desert.

It's this kind of middle-aged angst that these
people have

and they try to fill it with something--

and that thing is young flesh.

There's this empty hole in their relationship

that they fill with a choreography.

They try to revisit this homecoming--

this return of the son--

which never took place.

They pay these young men,

who are male prostitutes,

some money in order to come and perform.

These men, who offer their flesh to these
parents,

are in a sense also the young men whose flesh
is used

in order to do the state's bidding.

You know, who do we ship off to do our bidding
in Afghanistan?

The world keeps asserting itself in, kind
of,

strange and theatrical ways around them--

in these little apparitions

and these sort of ghosts and images that they
have.

They become, in a sense, viewers of the spectacle--

of horror.

Death should happen far away.

You know, conflict should not happen in these
particular comfortable surroundings.

And so, they are caught between those two
roles--

of being a soldier, being a son,

and being an object of desire.

But for me, the more interesting possibility
was

maybe there was never a son.

Maybe there were sons and they're just gone

and there is this vacuum.

In the end, they drive down this country road.

We've seen that country road three times already.

And all of a sudden there is a camel walking
towards them.

And they follow this animal to a quarry.

Inside is sons that we’ve seen up until
that point.

They're comrades.

They're all dressed in fatigues and uniforms.

They've been ambushed and they've been killed.

Through having these multiple references,

it becomes something I was able to talk about
several things at the same time

and is none of them at any one time.

So it's about sort of figuring out what to
put along the way

to pull you away from this notion that there
is a linear story

with a goal at the end.