dream (2022)
watch it first.
dream is an animated documentary based on my trivial pieces of life during the past few years, and a problem that really bothers me.
for the beginning i wanted to make a documentary film that focuses on my insomnia, documenting the situation when i’m trying to sleep and the relationship between me and my sleeping drugs.
after shooting a few sequences, i couldn’t stop feeling that i am acting in front of the camera. i asked myself is this still a documentary? it feels fake but it’s partly true, where is the truth in it? then this question became “what is real?”and for the audience, looking at me in bed is kind of torture.
so i start to try to tell a different story about this insomnia.
i want this story to have a start and an end, instead of filming what’s happening instantly, i am more comfortable telling a story that happened in my past. because what happened can be more accurately represented, i looked back in my life, to find a story about my insomnia.
when i look at those old pictures, i felt like all these things like half fake, i can’t remember any detail of it, like before or after the shot, nothing i can remember, and i’m not sure about accuracy anymore.
i browse my old photos, write down everything i can remember that is related to insomnia, and draw things that have pictures in my mind. and then i try to figure out a story from it, then i draw every single shot in the storyboard.
different from my past documentary shooting experience, which is just pointing and shooting. i need to create something that happened in the past or never happened, i spent a lot of time on these kinds of details, like the bunk bed and the map. from nothing to still pictures and then make them move.
and about the question at the ending. since i have the problem of sleep, i hardly dream anymore, or i just can’t remember them, feels like i’m missing something in the world. i used to feel that people who talk about their dreams are stupid, but now i think maybe i was envied because i lack the ability to dream.
authenticity use to be the matter appealing me to documentaries, watching and making them. animated documentary is a way of cheating for me. it can’t be the same thing with live footage, it just for demonstrate what happened back then because you have no camera on you.
what is fake what is real, what is dream what is life, big questions that bothering me. what should i do now, i don’t know. all the stories just stories, fiction or nonfiction, same thing.
by the way, this might be my coolest poster ever done.