Zero [DVD] (D)

This is the debut feature of surrealist avant-garde filmmaker James Fotopoulos. A work that oscillates between scenes of serenity and ones of utter depravity, “Zero” tells the story of a man (Matthew Buckley) sliding into absolute isolation, accompanied by pornography, mental illness and disease. In his drab apartment, with its exposed pipes and austere furnishings, the man has pasted explicit pornographic and medical images. He also has collected an array of jars that hold specimens of tumours and animals. The man seeks intimacy and release from his seclusion but his only source of contact is his extensive collection of pornographic magazines that he pours over and speaks to in an array of demonic monologues, whilst a gruesome cyst grows on his forearm. The man’s masturbatory fantasies lead to him romancing the armless upper half of a store mannequin whom he covets. In alternate sequences the man is witnessed strolling through fields and forests, having found a space (perhaps imaginary) in which to reside free from the conflict and poisonous, misogynist, racist ranting of his mind. Fotopoulos’ experimental, minimalist cinema despondently explores the spaces of physical desire and the dark parameters of loneliness. The industrial sound-scape, that marks all of this Midwestern filmmaker’s work, adds to the sense of futility and misanthropy that permeates the unilateral narrative. Music by Tom Nicholl. Features images of pornography and excessive female nudity and medical experimentation. Warning: some scenes may disturb.