Omer Fast is a Israel born, Berlin based video artist turned feature filmmaker. Born in Jerusalem, he spent much of his youth travelling back and forth between Israel and the United States. Much of his art builds from this dual-identity. “I grew up with two identities and two languages that I had to speak fluently, and so what is always connected to my work is this notion of being perceived as authentic, and how much that is a performance.” His films work with these dualities and contradictions, blending fact and fiction, reportage and storytelling, personal experiences and those of others, all the while mixing modes and approaches.

Many of his pieces reinterpret pre-existing footage, or manipulate recorded interviews. An early film, CNN Concatenated (2002) is assembled from CNN footage, meshing the voices of various newscasters into an 18 minute monologue. Spielberg’s List (2003), an hour long two channel film features the model concentration camp created for the Hollywood holocaust film and interviews with extras who worked on it, Fast revealing how common it is that people conflate filmic (mis)representation and historical reality. Godville (2005) took a similar approach, featuring altered interviews with three costumed re-enactors at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, questioning America’s relationship with its recent history using a point where entertainment and history meets. Another mode-blending work, the multi-part Nostalgia (2009) follows the plight of a refugee arriving to London, transposing a straight interview into a 1970s Sci-Fi inspired fiction narrative.

More recent work delves heavily into issues surrounding American foreign policy. Four channel installation Casting (2007) features distorted interviews with an American soldier, and recent film 5000 Feet is the Best (2011) uses conversations with a drone pilot as a launching point to create a multilayered video collage on all manner of subjects. Continuity (2013) includes a married couple dealing with the return of their son from Afghanistan.

Fast has had solo exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2012), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2010), Berkeley Art Museum (2009), Museum of Modern Art, Vienna (2007), Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh (2005), Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2004), and the Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt (2003). His work has also been featured in dOCUMENTA (13) (2012) and numerous biennials and group exhibitions, as well as many of his works being held in permanent collections around the world.

He won Whitney Biennial’s $100,000 Bucksbaum Award in 2007 as well as the Neue National Galerie Prize for Young Artists in 2014.

Recently, Fast has followed in the footsteps of artists like Steve McQueen, Julian Schnabel or Sam Taylor Wood, directing a narrative feature for the cinema. Remainder (2015), an adaptation of a popular book by novelist Tom McCarthy stars Tom Sturridge and played in the Berlin and London Film Festivals. The film is on general release in the UK from June 24th, and has picked up very positive reviews so far.

Omer Fast also has a survey of his work on currently at the BALTIC Centre in Gateshead.

Submit your films to this month’s Film of the Month before June 14th. The top three with the highest number of votes will be sent to Omer Fast for his insightful feedback.