A documentary, consisting entirely of Internet video interviews, exploring the world of webcam mask fetish performers.

“Transfigured Nights” is consistent with Blyth’s early examinations of sexuality. It is comprised entirely of webcam footage of men who derive pleasure from dressing up, mostly in rubber. Not for the faint hearted or the closed minded, there is no denying the fascination of subject matter that’s kinky, hilarious and sometimes just plain banal. Opening with the sound of laboured deep breathing that’s part Darth Vader and part Malcolm McClaren from “Filth and the Fury”, linking the various segments together with images of a full moon shot through clouds and Jed Town’s eerie, Lynchian music, Blyth’s direction is precise and sure handed throughout. While an audio sample from Ed Wood’s “Glen or Glenda” might signal that he’s not taking himself or his subjects too seriously, the tone is edgy and provocative.

Some of the men talk explicitly about enjoying bondage and discipline, the theme illustrated with images of the trussed and the tied waxing lyrical about the joys of confinement and experiencing that special kind of ecstasy that only comes with the strategic placement of a vibrating egg somewhere between the sixth and seventh layer of latex.

Others place less emphasis on the physical. One Asian gentleman is fixated on dressing up in full body suits so as to best approximate the cartoon characters popular in the Japanese market. He distances himself from any overt sexual display yet, ironically, the image of him putting multiple plastic bags over the head of his anime mask is perhaps the most disturbing in “Transfigured Nights”, evoking snuff movies and/or the fate of David Lynch’s Laura Palmer.

The concluding segment deals with ‘Miss Piggy’, a retired, 65 year old Vietnam veteran whose drag queen antics seem almost quaint next to those of the cross-dressing, Burka wearing Muslim man whose decision to convert to Islam on the day of 9/11 stands as the film’s definitive statement of self delusion. Whatever the intended political aspects of this radical act – and these would seem secondary to the aesthetics of full body coverage garments – it doesn’t seem to occur ‘Deeba’, the 38 year old IT worker, that the Taliban or Al-Qaeda might have an issue or two with the transgendered.

A deliberate choice is made to stop short of showing any sexual acts. As Blyth made clear after the screening, there was no shortage of such material to work with. What interests the director is not people getting off so much as it is the subculture as a whole and, specifically, the way the internet is being used to forge connections between members of this rarefied community. These connections are at once highly intimate and personal and distanced and dispassionate. The web becomes a huge, international confessional box, the faithful fetishists hiding behind their own self-styled masks, confiding in the world, sparing us no detail.

“Transfigured Nights” confirms Blyth’s on-going relevence on the challenging margins of the country’s film industry. On the strength of it if not other recent work it is to be hoped that future funding becomes available for this vital talent. -Art House

Transfigured Nights (David Blyth 2009).mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	47 min 50 s
Size: 	752 MiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	714x572 ~> 762x572
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	1 971 kb/s
BPP: 	0.193
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AC-3 @ 224 kb/s (Stereo)

https://nitro.download/view/97743F97A8E606A/Transfigured_Nights_(David_Blyth_2009).mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post David Blyth – Transfigured Nights (2007) first appeared on Cinema of the World.