An essential part of being a Satanist is having a bold personal style, according to Realm of Satan, the absorbing, inventive and irreverent debut feature documentary of Scott Cummings.
Largely dialogue-free, the film (which had its world premiere at Sundance and screens at Visions du Reel in Nyon in the Highlights section) welcomes us inside the homes, household routines, kinks and rituals of disparate members of today’s Church of Satan around the world, placing a high premium on ornate visual trappings and performed spectacle. Founded by American occultist Anton LaVey (a quote from his 1969 The Satanic Bible opens the doc), the religious organisation does not promote belief in an actual Devil, but rather endorses the rational understanding that life is to be lived freely and to the full on Earth according to self-made rules, manifesting one’s own desires and sense of mystery.
The doc’s lean into aesthetic trappings over verbal ideological analysis does not feel superficial, but operates effectively as show-don’t-tell. In episodic vignettes, mundane domestic routine co-exists with costumed extravagance (in one segment, for instance, a man paints his face white with black-rimmed eyes at the kitchen table before hanging out the laundry), inviting us to consider Church practices as a creative means of expression and self-actualisation, that enhances the everyday through drama.
Cummings shoots with some degree of distanced curiosity, though his obvious appreciation for the transgressive spirit of the Church and its unapologetic embrace of the weird and marginalised buoys up every frame. Theatrical tableaux emerge in collaboration with subjects, with the non-judgment that also underpinned his well-received short Buffalo Juggalos (2014), a surreal portrait of the much maligned Juggalo subculture of Buffalo, New York. His open-mindedness, affinity for outsiders and wry delight in the absurdities that colour reality are comparable to the mindset fellow American documentarian Penny Lane brought to her equally vibrant Heil Satan? (2019), a de-stigmatising look into the non-theistic organisation called the Satanic Temple. But the two films are vastly different, as Lane focused on the political activism of a group staging provocative public actions in support of secular democracy. Those with at least a mid-tolerance for deviance from convention will find much that is fresh in Realm of Satan.
In Realm of Satan, a goat gives birth; dancers light flaming antlers in the woods; there are magic tricks with cards and swords; a velvet-gowned woman cradles a goat in an inverted Nativity scene, and in fairly sexually explicit scenes, figures in PVC gimp suits converge for an orgy. Sharp dressers in the ubiquitous red and black palette of the Church opt for hearses or black sports cars to get about otherwise sleepy-looking, leafy neighbourhoods, embodying eccentricity in a Church that offers a sense of belonging for the disabled (one central protagonist, Robert, is a wheelchair user) and numerous queer members. A human and an animal face dissolve into one; a being that is half-man and half-goat clops around a kitchen. Delighting in experimentation and the idea of transmutation (indeed, magicians and filmmakers may have much in common), Cummings allows playful scope for comical illusion within porous hybrid borders.
We take a look around the Halloween House, a Gothic house in the so-called Witchcraft District of Poughkeepsie, New York. Founded by a retired stage prop designer, then owned by gay adult entertainer Matthew Camp, it is full of spooky paraphernalia, candelabra and pentagrams year-round. It served as a meeting hub for Church adherents and local misfits, until in 2021 an arsonist burned it down. The gasoline attack on the kitschy mansion is condemned as a possible hate crime — suggesting that those to be feared in society are not the ones playing dress-up as high priestesses and warlocks.
Director, screenwriter, editor: Scott Cummings
Cast: Peter Gilmore, Blanche Barton and Peggy Nadramia
Producers: Caitlin Mae Burke, Pacho Velez, Molly Gandour
Cinematographer: Gerald Kerkletz
Sound: Manuel Meischner, Manuel Grandpierre
Production company: Asterlight (US)Sales: Visit Films (US)
Venue: Visions du Reel (Highlights)
In English, German, Spanish, Swedish
82 minutes
