Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays.
A Review by David Finkelstein.
Poetry of Dreams is a short film, just over two minutes long, by Hayk Matevosyan, an Armenian-born artist based in Los Angeles. Over the swelling sounds of strings and voices we see lone figures, their eyes closed, but in striking settings. A boy stands in a grassy field, a man faces towards the ocean, a man with his face hidden under a scarf dances on a train platform.
Matevosyan uses very basic film tricks to evoke the altered reality states of dreams: turning the footage upside down, slowing it down, and running it backwards. A woman’s hair un-cascades back up onto her head, sand un-pours up from a box. These simple but beautifully realized effects contribute to a magical sense that by closing their eyes, these people are entering interior landscapes where the rules are different. When the boy does finally open his eyes, it implies we have the power to bring our interior worlds outward, and show them to others. And that’s exactly what this film itself is doing.
David Finkelstein is a filmmaker, musician, and critic. For more information on Film Scratches, or to submit an experimental film for review, contact lakeivan@earthlink.net.
Read also:
Film Scratches: Poetry of the Downtrodden – Short Films of Jeremy Gluck (2017)