A stable relationship?

Inspired by an incident in Washington in 2005 — the death of a man, Kenneth Pinyan, who bled to death after having sex with an Arab stallion — the result is an eerily beautiful non-fiction narrative (shot in 16mm) that includes testimonies from Pinyan’s friends as well as law officers and horse rescuers.

Devor says he has "aestheticised the sleaze" right out of the story, by which he means that trendy intellectuals need not feel guilty for wanting to watch his film.

Zoo is supremely unsettling. The word "love" is used repeatedly. Basically, Pinyan’s friends, who call themselves zoos, short for zoophile, want us to accept that having sex with horses — and being filmed having sex with horses — is a natural extension of looking after those creatures. None of them uses the word "homosexual". Pinyan had a cast made of the penis of his favourite horse, Strut, but we are left to make up our own mind as to what this means.

The subjects, mostly grizzled loners (played to perfection by actors but voiced by themselves), present themselves as laid-back dudes, cowboy pioneers. Says one: "With horses, you’re either a good person or a bad person." Says another: "They aren’t going to ask you about the latest Madonna album!" There is humour in Zoo, then, just not of the obvious kind.

But if zoophiles such as "H" and "Happy Horseman" (they use their on-line monikers) think the film is an advert for their predilections, they’re wrong. The men talk about Pinyan’s affection for his one child — how he was going to bring his ex-wife to Washington so he could see his son, at which point Devor provides a close-up of a man’s hand gripping a boy’s.

Most viewers are likely to shiver at this point. Devor makes his subjects’ needs — whether for humans or for horses — seem claustrophobic, not so much wrong as terrifyingly damaged.

Would one feel differently about this portrait if the animals involved were female? And if money were changing hands? One man says, sternly, that he would never introduce a horse to another man for money. "That would be prostitution!" The ethics involved are extremely complicated, but there’s no mistaking the zoophiles’ self-righteous tone.

Since Pinyan’s death the community has been effectively run out of town, and bestiality is now illegal in Washington. The men feel they are being victimised, and their anger creates a haunting background hum.

The woman who now looks after Strut describes one of the men in the group as a "child molester type". She also says she’s "on the edge" of under-standing what they do. After watching this shadowy but illuminating document you may find yourself similarly torn.

Zoo