OUT

“Similarly to rituals of exorcism in Jewish literatures (the Dybbuk) or in popular cinema (The Exorcist), the demon who speaks through the Sub, is and isn’t herself. These sentences are all quotes of the present Israeli minister of foreign affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, known as one of the most extreme right wing politicians in Israel. His nationalist and racist ideology is literally demonized, but, at the same time, it is not presented as an external evil, but as inherent to the eroticized body of young Israelis, thus problematizing the moralizing and comfortable disavowal of the native Russian Lieberman, and asserting that the director, the participants, and the viewers may be implicated by his worldview. OUT is thus a hybrid between a documentary (both of the present rhetoric of the Israeli right, and of its free-spirited sexual community), a fictional scene harking to a genre of horror movies, an erotic scene and a political reflection. But it is also a hybrid in its structure. The ritual at the center of the work is framed by two scenes, each with its own distinct cinematic style. First, a preceding interview with the two participants seems at the beginning to be a straightforward documentary about their own experiences within the Israeli BDSM scene, but soon transforms into an exposition of the premise by which one is possessed, the other an exorcist. The final musical scene is a song set to the words of the Russian poet Esenin’s “Letter to Mother.” Executed as a one-shot, the song not only elevates and complicates the emotional resonance of what preceded it, but is also a direct, if twisted, homage to the final scene of another film that deals with hybridity, radical sexuality and politics: Dusan Makavejev’s WR, The Mystery of the Organism.” (ROEE ROSEN on OUT)