Emulsion Ep. 26 - Rob Tregenza on FAST

When, a few years ago, I agreed to interview the filmmaker Rob Tregenza on the eve of his career-spanning retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, I did not anticipate it would, before long, lead to a producing credit on his new film. Nor a whole other feature in the time between that he thanked me for helping motivate, or an extended interview on his strange experiences working with Béla Tarr. This week marks the release of Tregenza’s sixth feature, Fast, a characteristically audacious and formally virtuosic that opens at MoMA on Wednesday, August 12 for a world-premiere one-week run, followed by an opening at Los Angeles’ Laemmle cinemas on August 21. If you suspect I’m biased in the movie’s favor, good work; you are correct. But I also have as many questions about it as anyone else, and wanted to speak to Tregenza about Fast’s particulars and peculiarities. Thus this conversation that I hope you—whether you choose to be the listener or the reader—find as illuminating as I, the interviewer.