|
Like
a Dream that Vanishes Like a Dream That Vanishes continues my work in film both thematically and formally: the ephemerality of life echoed in the temporal nature of film, the stuff of life in the emulsion, and the energy, life-force in rhythmic light pulses. (Your life is like a candle burning...) Imageless emulsion is inter-cut with brief shots of natural elements and mise-en-scene of the stages of human life: a little boy runs and falls; teens hang out together at night smoking; sun shines through tree branches; men pace, waiting; flashes of lightning; an elderly man speaks philosophically about miracles. The movement between form and formlessness, appearing and withdrawing, creation and dissolution (death) are felt. The film image, as the reality behind it, is not quite graspable. (B.St) "
Like a Dream that Vanishes
is not only Sternberg's most artistically accomplished film,
it is her most philosophical work to date. This is not because it
includes a professor talking about philosophy, though John Davis
makes a significant contribution by introducing large, philosophical
issues in a work composed of "smaller and rougher" images
of everyday life; rather, it is because Sternberg's point of view
is philosophical in a more colloquial sense of the term. It is philosophical,
that is to say, calm, rational and imbued with a kind of intense
equanimity, in its acceptance of the ephemerality
of life (and film) and the doubtfulness of ever arriving at final
answers or infallible truths. One might also say that Sternberg
thinks philosophically through her images. Rather than imposing philosophical ideas on her
film's content, she integrates them in the film's formal elements,
giving them a filmic embodiment that lets us, as viewers, participate
in "the ancient condition of philosophy as beginning in wonder,"
while, at the same time, reflecting on how "wonder" may
be grounded in ordinary events of daily living and revealed through
the art of filmmaking ". What unites Sternberg’s disparate material is a concern with the temporality of all existence, a preoccupation not so much with death as with the fleetingness of every moment of experience. The themes of the film are closely tied to fundamental aspects of cinema: the image perpetually vanishes, only to be replaced, instantaneously, by another image.” (Chris Gehman) In the Collection of: Ryerson University Library Like a Dream that
Vanishes credits Available from:
Canadian Filmmakers' Distribution Centre Lightcone
|
|
| Like a Dream that Vanishes Transcript (English transcript) | ||
| Like a Dream that Vanishes Transcript (French transcript) | ||
| Reviews/Articles: | ||
| Like a Dream that Vanishes by Barbara Goslawski | ||
| Children, Nature, Fragmentation: An Idiosyncratic Review of the New York Film Festival's "Views from the Avant-Garde" by Craig Fischer | ||
| “NYFF 2000” by Brian Frye, IndieWire | ||
| Everyday Wonders in Barbara Sternberg's Like a Dream that Vanishes by William C. Wees | ||
| Like a Dream that Vanishes by Janine Marchessault | ||
| Film Production Grant application, April 1, 1998 | ||
| Chris Gehman, Broken Pencil | ||
|
