Omer Fast Exhibit – James Cohan Gallery

I found Omer Fast’s short film 5,000 Feet Is Best, one of the three films featured in the James Cohan exhibit to be the most fascinating of the three that were featured. I found it to be a very intriguing and intense film that keep me captivated throughout even though it would probably be considered to be fairly slow-paced. There are large chunks of the film where the drone pilot is seen reflecting on his own whilst smoking cigarettes, scenes which feature extended close-quarters shots that create a very intense tone.

What I found most intriguing about the film is the way in which it seemed to blur the lines between reality and recreation created by the segues between the real interview footage and the reenacted footage. The footage is also interrupted by short vignettes where the pilot tells the interviewer stories that contrast the other scenes with their more fast-paced and colorful footage.

The constant back and forth between fiction and falsehood reminded me a lot of the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, another work profiling a soldier’s memories and experiences with warfare.

The entire book told the purportedly true story of a man who served in Vietnam and profiled the horrible things he had witnessed until late in the novel when the author yanks back to curtain to reveal that while most of what the story was based upon was true, many of the characters and the specific events were, in fact, made-up. I remember when I read that book in high school that I was highly impacted by that moment, and I felt a similar feeling while watching 5,000 Feet Is Best, and I think that I set out to watch some of his other works in full because of how well done this piece was done from start to finish.

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