Omer Fast - The Casting

http://vimeo.com/70885581

"The Casting" is a short film and novel by video artist Omer Fast that presents one or two narratives seemingly seamlessly woven into one another. Fast interviews a soldier who tells a story about a German girl he goes on a date with, and about his vehicle running over an IED. The entire story is fabricated, then edited together using sound bites to create a new story, apparently ungrounded entirely from reality. The book form of the work contains the story that's being told along with photographs of the interview and of these scenes. Every picture is a still from a short video that was taken of that scene. A picture of two soldiers standing along side their vehicle is taken from a short clip of them awkwardly standing in a position that mimics running, and the wind and dust of the Middle East (California) ensures that no one can stand still for long. Even the shots of the interview are fake. Omer is seen in the book talking to the subject, mid word when the photo was taken, but the video shows Omer quietly sitting with his mouth half open, saying nothing, giving the illusion that he was engaged in conversation.

The two narratives blend together to create a third, more fluid story line that seems to jump around the world and back with no regard to the reader. Fast edited the interview extensively to create this story, and the audience isn't sure what is true and what isn't, even though they were fully engaged. This is interesting considered one short bit of the story in which fast asks the viewer how he knew he wasn't dreaming. The subject pauses for a moment is admits he can't really know. I suppose that this is the foundation of the work as a whole. Fast ends the film by saying that he is interested in how memory turns into narrative that is ungrounded from reality by means of time. He also says he isn't sure if this story (the story he is being told in the interview) will work, because it has taken up nearly 30 minutes, which contradicts the films 15 minute run time. This quick remark by Fast informs the audience that there is much they weren't told, even though the story seemed complete and believable.