1 00:00:03,100 --> 00:00:06,280 [Omer Fast: "Continuity"] 2 00:00:07,080 --> 00:00:08,580 Those moments are magical in film 3 00:00:08,580 --> 00:00:11,639 when we have kind of a pure linear motion 4 00:00:11,639 --> 00:00:13,620 that approaches something and reveals it. 5 00:00:13,620 --> 00:00:16,520 But I'm interested in the stuff that gets in the way. 6 00:00:16,920 --> 00:00:19,290 With more and more and more questions, 7 00:00:19,290 --> 00:00:22,750 you create, in a sense, a productive kind of confusion. 8 00:00:22,750 --> 00:00:24,430 And I think that's what I'm after. 9 00:00:26,760 --> 00:00:28,600 I had a commission for dOCUMENTA 10 00:00:28,610 --> 00:00:31,630 and they were also going to show this on TV. 11 00:00:31,890 --> 00:00:35,360 I started to think about this, kind of, TV movie 12 00:00:35,360 --> 00:00:40,660 and this notion of the domestic interior that TV is all about-- 13 00:00:40,660 --> 00:00:44,940 or at least for me--and that kind of middle class obsessions 14 00:00:44,940 --> 00:00:46,650 of showing the family 15 00:00:46,650 --> 00:00:47,930 and showing the living room 16 00:00:47,930 --> 00:00:53,760 and showing the kind of dynamic within a particular family. 17 00:00:53,760 --> 00:00:56,960 And I wanted to do it in the context of a homecoming-- 18 00:00:56,960 --> 00:01:01,720 that is, ostensibly or topically, Germany’s involvement in Afghanistan. 19 00:01:04,040 --> 00:01:07,280 Except for, there isn't that kind of classical development. 20 00:01:07,280 --> 00:01:10,640 You don't reach a particular climax and a denouement. 21 00:01:10,640 --> 00:01:16,120 You have a repetition of these scenes and these places. 22 00:01:16,120 --> 00:01:18,240 It is increasingly formalized. 23 00:01:22,060 --> 00:01:26,580 And having TV as the medium for showing the story 24 00:01:26,580 --> 00:01:28,740 has dictated a lot choices I made. 25 00:01:40,619 --> 00:01:42,440 You have two parents who are middle class 26 00:01:42,440 --> 00:01:46,040 who are doing materially well. 27 00:01:46,040 --> 00:01:47,860 But something in their relationship is off. 28 00:02:20,180 --> 00:02:21,460 There is a trauma, 29 00:02:21,469 --> 00:02:23,629 but it's not the trauma that you think it is. 30 00:02:23,629 --> 00:02:25,090 It's the trauma of emptiness. 31 00:02:25,760 --> 00:02:28,779 It's a, sort of, suburban desert. 32 00:02:28,779 --> 00:02:33,399 It's this kind of middle-aged angst that these people have 33 00:02:33,960 --> 00:02:35,540 and they try to fill it with something-- 34 00:02:35,540 --> 00:02:37,620 and that thing is young flesh. 35 00:02:45,760 --> 00:02:48,680 There's this empty hole in their relationship 36 00:02:48,680 --> 00:02:51,480 that they fill with a choreography. 37 00:03:04,020 --> 00:03:07,320 They try to revisit this homecoming-- 38 00:03:07,329 --> 00:03:08,469 this return of the son-- 39 00:03:08,469 --> 00:03:10,969 which never took place. 40 00:03:21,650 --> 00:03:23,150 They pay these young men, 41 00:03:23,150 --> 00:03:24,639 who are male prostitutes, 42 00:03:24,639 --> 00:03:28,000 some money in order to come and perform. 43 00:03:40,440 --> 00:03:43,599 These men, who offer their flesh to these parents, 44 00:03:43,599 --> 00:03:47,120 are in a sense also the young men whose flesh is used 45 00:03:47,120 --> 00:03:49,079 in order to do the state's bidding. 46 00:03:49,680 --> 00:03:53,560 You know, who do we ship off to do our bidding in Afghanistan? 47 00:04:01,720 --> 00:04:04,740 The world keeps asserting itself in, kind of, 48 00:04:04,749 --> 00:04:07,319 strange and theatrical ways around them-- 49 00:04:07,319 --> 00:04:08,949 in these little apparitions 50 00:04:08,949 --> 00:04:12,709 and these sort of ghosts and images that they have. 51 00:04:13,020 --> 00:04:15,980 They become, in a sense, viewers of the spectacle-- 52 00:04:15,989 --> 00:04:16,549 of horror. 53 00:04:18,060 --> 00:04:20,229 Death should happen far away. 54 00:04:21,120 --> 00:04:25,420 You know, conflict should not happen in these particular comfortable surroundings. 55 00:04:28,080 --> 00:04:30,940 And so, they are caught between those two roles-- 56 00:04:30,950 --> 00:04:32,420 of being a soldier, being a son, 57 00:04:32,420 --> 00:04:34,100 and being an object of desire. 58 00:04:47,100 --> 00:04:49,440 But for me, the more interesting possibility was 59 00:04:49,440 --> 00:04:51,320 maybe there was never a son. 60 00:04:52,140 --> 00:04:54,220 Maybe there were sons and they're just gone 61 00:04:54,230 --> 00:04:55,910 and there is this vacuum. 62 00:04:56,320 --> 00:04:59,300 In the end, they drive down this country road. 63 00:04:59,310 --> 00:05:01,590 We've seen that country road three times already. 64 00:05:02,900 --> 00:05:06,900 And all of a sudden there is a camel walking towards them. 65 00:05:08,220 --> 00:05:12,020 And they follow this animal to a quarry. 66 00:05:19,660 --> 00:05:23,080 Inside is sons that we’ve seen up until that point. 67 00:05:23,080 --> 00:05:24,010 They're comrades. 68 00:05:24,010 --> 00:05:26,430 They're all dressed in fatigues and uniforms. 69 00:05:26,430 --> 00:05:29,350 They've been ambushed and they've been killed. 70 00:05:34,880 --> 00:05:37,000 Through having these multiple references, 71 00:05:37,000 --> 00:05:41,120 it becomes something I was able to talk about several things at the same time 72 00:05:41,120 --> 00:05:43,820 and is none of them at any one time. 73 00:05:47,680 --> 00:05:51,140 So it's about sort of figuring out what to put along the way 74 00:05:51,150 --> 00:05:55,960 to pull you away from this notion that there is a linear story 75 00:05:55,960 --> 00:05:57,380 with a goal at the end.