Dreaming, films and Surrealism
Mark Blagrove, Julia Lockheart
Routledge eBooks February 1, 2023 DOI: 10.4324/9781003037552-16 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Dreaming |
| Key points | Argues that films can be oneiric—resembling dream processes even when no dream is depicted—and that surrealists valued experiencing such films over interpreting them. This interpretation-versus-experience distinction also appears in the phenomenological approach to dreams, which the chapter describes and whose implications it discusses. |
Abstract
The chapter begins with the text of a dream told to us as part of an online event for the International Society for the Study of Surrealism, a painting of the dream and a commentary on its composition. Main content: This chapter gives examples of the use of dreams in linear narrative films, sometimes as plot devices, and then compares this with films that are oneiric, that is, films that have sequences, often disjointed, that are inspired by common understandings of what dreams are like. From early in the surrealist movement films were seen as oneiric, as akin to the processes that form dreams even if a dream was not ostensibly depicted. The surrealists emphasised experiencing such films rather than interpreting them. This distinction between interpretation and experience is present also in the phenomenological approach to dreams, which is described in the final sections of the chapter. Section headings: Dreams and film; The use of dreams in linear films; The tangential incorporation of dreams into films; History of realist and non-realist dream films; Surrealist oneiric films; Buñuel – a love for dreams; Cocteau – the film is a dream; Fellini – from neorealist to oneiric films; Contrasting realist and oneiric films; Phenomenology and dreams; Implications of the phenomenological approach to dreams.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dreaming: a conceptual framework for philosophy of mind and empirical research | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Metaphor and hyperassociativity: the imagination mechanisms behind emotion assimilation in sleep and dreaming | 2015 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Varieties of Lucid Dreaming Experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Experimental Research on Dreaming: State of the Art and Neuropsychoanalytic Perspectives | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Neurobiology of Consciousness: Lucid Dreaming Wakes Up | 2009 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |