Hey everyone! This is my third and final article about the movies I saw this year at the Boston Independent Film Festival. There were a whole lot of great indie movies there this year, and I could only see a small fraction of them, but they're all really good. So do yourself a favor and make sure to see some of them, whether at the festival or when they are released in theatres or online. The final film I saw was an anthology film titled Collective: Unconscious.
Collective: Unconscious
Collective: Unconscious begins with a fourth wall-breaking monologue concerning the nature of hypnosis and trances. Specifically about how, in many ways, watching a film is a type of self-induced hypnosis, how we let the shapes and colors and sounds emanating from the screen block out everything else from our sense until all that’s left in our world is the story being told on the screen. This is an incredibly appropriate way to start one of the most surreal films I’ve seen in quite some time.
Collective: Unconscious is an anthology made up of five short films, each by a different director. In order to create them, each of the quintet of filmmakers was asked to adapt one of the others’ dreams. And I don’t mean that as a figure of speech- the anthology’s producer gave each of them a prompt describing a dream one of the others had had. Beyond that, they were given complete creative freedom to make whatever they want. The results are, as you would probably expect, both incredibly varied and stunningly bizarre.
Collective: Unconscious is an anthology made up of five short films, each by a different director. In order to create them, each of the quintet of filmmakers was asked to adapt one of the others’ dreams. And I don’t mean that as a figure of speech- the anthology’s producer gave each of them a prompt describing a dream one of the others had had. Beyond that, they were given complete creative freedom to make whatever they want. The results are, as you would probably expect, both incredibly varied and stunningly bizarre.
For example, First Day Out (directed by Josephine Decker) consists of a series of enchanting dance performances with dubbed-over audio of former prisoners describing their first day after being released from prison. Swallowed, directed by Lily Baldwin, is about the anxieties that accompany a new mother and has a lot of classical body horror, since it was adapted from a dream about parasites. Possibly most bizarre of all is Frances Bodomos’ short, which parodies those low-budget ‘edutainment’ shows which were popular on public television in the 80s. This particular show, however, is called Everybody Dies!, is hosted by the Grim Reaper, and consists of a whole lot of dark comedy about how likely African-American kids are to die violent deaths in our society.
Whether or not any particular short appeals to you will largely be a matter of personal taste considering the wide variety of genres, formats, and tones on display. Plus, I feel that incredibly surreal movies such as this are something that you either have a taste for or don’t. But between the five shorts, there’s probably at least one that appeals to your sensibilities. Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed all of them, partly because they appeal to my love of surrealism, but also because it made me think about the nature of film and dreams, and the intersection between the two.
Grade: A
Whether or not any particular short appeals to you will largely be a matter of personal taste considering the wide variety of genres, formats, and tones on display. Plus, I feel that incredibly surreal movies such as this are something that you either have a taste for or don’t. But between the five shorts, there’s probably at least one that appeals to your sensibilities. Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed all of them, partly because they appeal to my love of surrealism, but also because it made me think about the nature of film and dreams, and the intersection between the two.
Grade: A
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