e-flux Film is very pleased to present Zoo (2007, 75 minutes) for the February 2023 edition of our online screening series Staff Picks.
Directed by Robinson Devor, and co-written by Charles Mudede and Devor, Zoo centers around the case of Kenneth Pinyan, a Seattle aircraft engineer at Boeing who died in 2005 after performing a sexual act with a horse. Narrated in a lyrical yet restrained, formally distinctive style, Zoo combines audio testimony from people involved in the case or who were familiar with Pinyan, with speculative re-enactments that feature a mix of actors and actual subjects. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007 and later screened at the Cannes Film Festival Directors’ Fortnight that same year.
“Zoo strives to liberate Mr. Hands [Pinyan] from his posthumous fate as tabloid punch line. It allows the friends of the dead man a means for disclosure and dares to find, in their candid accounts of their desires and the hidden worlds where they were fulfilled, something strangely beautiful and even recognizable.” (Dennis Lim, The New York Times)
Zoo will stream on e-flux Film from February 1–28, 2023. Watch it here.
About the filmmakers
Robinson Devor is an American film director, screenwriter, and editor; and a film professor at Cornish College of the Arts. Devor has directed both documentaries as well as fiction films; his filmography includes narrative works such as The Woman Chaser (1999) and Police Beat (2005), and documentary works such as Zoo (2007), and Pow Wow (2018).
Charles Tonderai Mudede is a Zimbabwean-born cultural critic, urbanist, filmmaker, college lecturer, and writer. He is senior staff writer of The Stranger, a lecturer at Cornish College of the Arts, and director of the feature film Thin Skin (2021).
About the series
Staff Picks is a monthly streaming series on e-flux Film of staff picks and recommended videos designed to disrupt the monotony of an algorithm. Before the end times of big data, we used to discover suggested content along dusty shelves in video rental stores, where Post-it notes scribbled by shift workers implored us to experience the same movies that made them guffaw, scream, or weep. Sometimes the content bored us, sometimes it overwhelmed us, and sometimes, as if by magic, it was just right. e-flux invites you to relive this rental store mode of perusal, with personalized picks curated through judgment that does not take into consideration your viewing history.
For more information, contact program [at] e-flux.com.
