Dreams and Delusions

This program of short films concern neuroscience, those points at which our brains deceive us, and those other points at which we may be inspired, or guided, by the visions of our dreams.

FILMS:

Directed by Julie Engass

It was the summer I started getting more restless. I was suddenly too fast, out of control, too much. Too much of everything.

Hind’s Dream| 9 min | Quatar | 2014

Directed by Suzannah Mirghani

Hind’s Dream is a story that reflects the history, modernity, and folklore of the Arab Gulf states. Hind is a bedouin girl who spends weeks alone in the tent as her husband hunts. In a tangled landscape of dream and reality, she recounts a strange dream about wandering alone in the desert, meeting an old oracle, and glimpsing a future desert city. Beneath the barren desert of Hind’s reality the thick black matter of her subconscious is brewing—and just like the bubbling oil in the gas fields around her, rises to the surface of this dreamscape.

Amygdala | 10 min 9 sec | USA & Germany | 2013

Directed by Jeannette Louie

“Amygdala” is a scientific tale. Located deep inside the temporal lobe of the human brain, a small almond-shaped region orchestrates our emotional life. This is the amygdala, which is an ancient biology that deciphers whether an experience is emotionally traumatic or merely anxiety-ridden. It structures our emotional responses to these experiences. “Amygdala” is an experimental video that illustrates how the perception of fear operates by combining the lyrical tradition of a fairy tale with the vernacular nature of presenting scientific fact.

2026 | 9 min | Egypt | 2010

Directed by Maha Maamoun

Based on a text from the recent Egyptian novel The Revolution of 2053, by Mahmoud Uthman, and referencing a scene from Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962), a time-traveller recounts his vision of the future of the Pyramids area, and by extension Egypt, in the year 2026 – a vision that strains to reach beyond, yet remains severely confined by the present’s imaginal constraints.

Headspace | 1 min | USA | 2014

All work (video/audio) by Jake Fried

A figure evolves from a frenzied diorama of rapidly emerging and changing images hand-drawn with ink, gouache, whiteout and coffee.

Through the Hawthorn | 10 min | UK | 2013

Directors, Anna Benner, Pia Borg, and Gemma Burditt

Sam has stopped taking his medication – he still doesn’t think he is ill. His mother is fraught after finding Sam naked in a freezing lake in the middle of the night. The doctor thinks Sam should try a different medication.Three characters, three perspectives, three directors: A triptych exploring three very different senses of reality.

COUCOU | 8 min | QATAR | 2014

Directed by Meriem Mesraoua

Eighty-year-old Samira spends her days in her large apartment, caring for her life-sized goldfish Coucou and warding off the outside world with pieces of aluminum foil, which she tapes to the walls and ceiling. But when an upstairs neighbour’s laundry lands on her balcony, Samira’s already fragile mental state shatters.

Living in Space | 12 min | Germany/Estonia | 2013

Directed by Katre Steinbrück (Haav)

Have you been in the Space? Oliver has, without even leaving the Earth. Oliver has Schizophrenia. In his life imagination and reality form a world, where its hard to resist being dragged in illusion, but even harder to get out of it. Every day, he lives with a threat of falling back to psychosis. An Animated Documentary about Oliver, a man from Tallinn, who, as a young man suffered from bouts of Schizophrenia.

Followed by a conversation on “The Science of Sleep & Dreams” with NYUAD Science Faculty.

Imagine Science Film Festival is presented in partnership with NYUAD Institute.