Dream Conversation Sequence (5-Minute Excerpt)

Video Call Conversation

Over the weekend I aurally and visually recorded a conversation had over video-call with my mum about a dream I had of my late grandmother a couple months ago. The conversation was naturally emotional, but it also encouraged my mum to speak about her own dreams of my late grandmother, and the general feeling of longing something which is lost.

Meeting with Tutor

I had a meeting with my tutor after the weekend, during which I informed her how my shoots went. She asked me questions about the dream and the responses I got from my mum which brought in more ideas about films that invoke similar feelings through similar strategies of filmmaking, like first-person storytelling and first-person documentary. Here are some notes from the session.

Inspirations and Decisions

Rather than trying to filmically re-create the visuals of the dream, I want to attempt to re-create the feeling of being in the dream, and the mismatchedness of experiencing something past and present at the same time. The main theme of family, distance, and longing is something which permeates Chantal Akerman's 1977 film "News from Home". The experimental film is made up of a series of snapshots of the streets and the Subway of New York, and is aurally accompanied by the sound of Akerman's voice reading out letters which her mum wrote and sent to her over a period of time, from her homeplace of Belgium. Ideas of distance, homesickness, acclimation to a new place, and identity are felt and contemplated on throughout the film, despite its simple execution. Moreover, the first-person nature of the film is another element of it that aligns with my own project, as Akerman is positioning herself as an immigrant in New York trying to find her feet by fimling the ways in which she views the world, whilst also reflecting on some very personal thoughts that her mum is communicating to her via letters.

In order to construct this feeling of longing and loss, through first-person filmmaking techniques, I am planning a shoot in which I will be recording glimpses of my own life in a similar vain to Akerman in "News from Home". In the edit, I will be bringing the footage together under the audio of the video call I had with my mum. I want the sequence to be mixed-media based, therefore I want to incorporate videos of both Cyprus and the UK from my digital camcorder, in order to implicate a feeling of difference in time and place, as well as a feeling of memory. I have been reading about first-person documentary and the incorporation of dreams in films in order to understand theories behind these filmmaking styles and to also find more inspiration for how to film and edit this sequence.

Another source of inspiration that is more abstract is Mona Hatoum's "Measures of Distance" which again involves the artist's relationship with a female family figure, her mother. This film is much more haptic as it visually portrays text written by Hatoum's mother overlaid with videos of a woman's nude body. 

Another source of inspiration, based on filmmaking style is Syed's "Clippy":