"The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters"

The front of Salman Rushdie's Two Years Eight Months And Twenty Eight Nights  has this image from Goya with the quote in the original Spanish that's in the picture - El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.

It seems an appropriate thought for our times.

The Kahn Academy has a description of the etching and how it was made.  It is one of 80 prints called Los Caprichos (caprices) produced in 1799.

The Rushdie book adds that it is the 43rd Capricho and the full caption at Prado [the major art museum in Madrid] reads:

"Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters:  united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels."

From the New York School of Medicine:

"The meaning of the title, El sueño de la razon produce monstruos, has been debated, mainly because sueño can mean both sleep and dream. Known as a pintor filósofo, Goya may have intended to affirm the Enlightenment by saying that when reason sleeps, the imagination produces monsters resulting in madness. Or, he may have implied that reason alone without imagination leads to madness, even horror. Goya's favorite literary character Don Quixote is a good illustration of imagination without reason. 

The symbolism of the animals in the picture supports the ambiguity of Goya's vision. The lynx is a symbol of secrets, known for its strong vision and hearing. The lynx and the bat carry supernatural, even satanic significance, but can represent good. The owl may indicate wisdom. But the owl, cat, and bat also stand for depression or melancholy. The large bat with the goat face in the upper right denotes a satanic element, as the goat is identified with the devil, see, for example, Goya's painting, The Witches' Sabbath (1797-98). Baudelaire said of Los Caprichos: "All those distortions, those bestial faces, those diabolic grimaces of his are impregnated with humanity" (Ciofalo, pp. 64-65). 

Goya produced two other, similar drawings, part of a series called sueños (dreams) which became Los Caprichos (The Whims). He juxtaposes the real and the demonic in several other works, such as De Que Mal Morira? (Of What Illness Will He Die?) and Las Viejas (see annotations). For comparison with other classic works that comment on the link between depression, sleep, and devilish temptation, see Dürer, Melencholia I and The Temptation of the Idler (The Dream of the Doctor). For Goya's interest in mental illness, see Courtyard with Lunatics."  

AIFF 2016: Shorts In Competition - Old Stars Dominate: Danny DeVito, Ed Asner, Valerie Harper

"In competition" means these films were selected by the screeners to be eligible for awards at the festival.  

"Features" are 'stories' that are 55 to  140 minutes. "Shorts" are stories that are 10-55 minutes.  Super shorts  are stories under 10 minutes.  'Stories' are fictional and distinguished from documentaries.  

This looks like a particularly strong group this year.  Danny DeVito is in one, Ed Asner in another, Valerie Harper in yet another.  Bruce Springsteen played a role in getting one to screen (because of issues over music rights.)  


Here's the list and below is a bit more about each.  

Shorts in Competition	Director	Country	Length
Curmudgeons	Jake DeVito	USA	17 min
Gorilla	Tibo Pinsard	France	14 min
Il Campione (The Champion )	Boming Jiang	Italy	12 min
Like A Butterfly	Eitan Pitigliani	United States	28 min
My Mom and the Girl	Susie Singer Carter	United States	20 min
Thunder Road	Jim Cummings	USA	13  min

 Since shorts are short, they are grouped into programs. These are the programs that the films are in and when those programs show:  Hard Knocks, Love and Pain, and Global Village.  The Martini Matinee is a regular AIFF event and takes a few shorts from different programs.  Also, there are some super shorts mixed in some of the programs.

This chart is my attempt to help you find which program each of the shorts in competition is in and when you can see them.  I'd note that those shorts not in competition can also be really good.  I often find films at the festival that are not in competition that I think should have been.  But seeing the ones in competition is a good bet.  And the others are mixed into the programs.

Program (right)   Film (below)	HARD KNOCKS Saturday - 1st Dec 3, 2016 11:30am -1 pm - AK Exper Small Thursday -2nd Dec. 8 5:30-7:30pm AK EX Large	MARTINI MATINEE Friday. Dec 9 2-4 PM BEAR TOOTH	LOVE AND PAIN Wed.  1st  Dec. 7 5:30-7 pm BEAR TOOTH Sat 2nd Dec. 10 5:45-7:15pm AK Ex Small	GLOBAL VILLAGE Sunday, DEC. 13  1PM-2:45PM AK Exper Large
Curmudgeons		√	√	√
Gorilla			√
Il Campione (The Champion )		√	√
Like A Butterfly			√	√
My Mom and the Girl	√			√
Thunder Road		√	√	√

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Curmudgeons
Jake DeVito
USA
0:17:00
✓
Danny DeVito is actually listed as the director and an actor in the film.  Jake is one of the producers and one of several other DeVito's in the credits.

This is the whole film*:

Curmudgeons from Jersey 2nd Avenue on Vimeo.


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Gorilla
Tibo Pinsard
France
0:14:00
 ✓

From Gorilla's Kickstarter page:

 "THE INSPIRATION. I love apes. Not you? I love real monkeys, but also "fake" apes, like the old King Kong, those played by actors in the original The Planet of the Apes, or the wonderfully created apes by makeup master artist Rick Baker for Greystoke, with Christopher Lambert and Ian Holm. All these films and these movie apes have profoundly marked my viewer's imagination, the universe they live in, the dangerous and fascinating jungle, but mainly because it talks to my "inner ape". We do not think enough about our "inner ape". Do we ?"







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Il Campione (The Champion )
Boming Jiang
Italy
0:12:00
 ✓
I'm having trouble finding much about this film, so I'll just leave you with the trailer for now.








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Like A Butterfly

Eitan Pitigliani

USA

0:28:00

"About a man who dreams he's a butterfly and he becomes so involved in this dream that he no longer knows if he's a man dreaming he's a butterfly, or if he's a butterfly dreaming he's a man."

From an Italoeurope  interview with Eitan Pitigliani

"the reason why I became a director, which is the need to capture the essence of life ­ and of what life could be ­ and then put it on screen, through a special medium: the film. What is great about films is that you make them together with other people, in my case with wonderful and special individuals that helped me take the idea I first had to the final stage. The story of the film came from a series of personal experiences that I have had over time, that I then jotted down in words together with the screenwriter Alessandro Regaldo. There were so many things that inspired me while I was writing the story."

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My Mom and the Girl
Susie Singer Carter
USA
0:20:00


From Richard Rossi website which includes an interview with Susie Singer Carter.

"MY MOM AND THE GIRL is a true story based on an odd encounter my East Coast mother, who suffers with Alzheimer's, shared one evening on the streets of East L.A. The story takes off after dinner with family & friends takes a dark turn and my mother is led to a proverbial crossroads where 3 very disparate, desperate women are unpredictably pulled back into the light. It's a funny, poignant and surprisingly rich story where apparent disabilities can be seen as gifts."

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Thunder Road
Jim Cummings
USA
0:13:00
 ✓

"As Cummings tells it, the film very unexpectedly got into Sundance, where it then won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Short Film. Of course, this brought some heat to the short and Cummings, which meant attention was also paid to a major question from the film: If he’d secured the rights to Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road,” which plays during a pivotal scene.  After paying $7,000 for the rights to the song so it could travel the festival circuit, Cummings was faced with a $40,000 to 50,000 licensing fee to put his short online. This prompted Cummings to take his case to Springsteen in the form of an open letter he posted on the internet."

This is the whole film*:

Thunder Road from Jim Cummings on Vimeo.




*When I first starting blogging the film festival, films that were available online were not eligible for most festivals and there was some concern when I would find the whole film somewhere.  But online video has gone from the dark ages to the present in just a few years.  If a film is good, you should want to see it several times, and on the big screen as well as on your computer.

Abuse Of Power Dream and Reality

I was standing next to a three foot glass cube in a museum when a man ordered me to do or not do something.  I looked at him and made some small protest comment.  Immediately, he said something like, "OK, you're out of here" and started to escort me to the exit.

That's when I woke up.  Upset.  WTF?  I wasn't doing anything and this jerk guard totally abused his power.   I tried to go back to sleep but I was agitated.

This time the guard grabbed my arm to escort me out.  I looked around to see if anyone was getting this on their phone. 

I'm on the edge of sleep and waking.  This time I demand his identification.  Who are you?  He refused to share his identification.  He wasn't wearing a badge or even a guard uniform.  He grabbed my arm.  I sat on the floor. 

The next time after I demanded his id and he refused - I said loudly to other people in the room, "Make a video."  I said I didn't have to listen to him because I didn't know who he was and he looked just like any museum visitor. 

I bobbed up above the dream surface, got some air, then slid back down under. 

This time I said forcefully, "I'm a museum investigator asked to find the guy who's been harassing museum guests."

This time I surfaced above the dream and stayed awake.  I described the dream to my wife.  Then I hit the snooze button, hoping Morning Edition would put me back to sleep.  But soon we were hearing my dream as a real-life nightmare.  It was bits and pieces of the tape of the Texas police officer harassing a black woman he'd pulled over for not signaling a lane change.  I have to say, as we've been driving around LA, that there are a lot of people who don't seem to know they have a turn signal.  These folks should be pulled over and shown the indicator and told to use it.  It should go on their record, so if they are seen without signaling again, they wouldn't get off so easily. 

But the cop in the tape is way over the line.  And then he tells the lady who is sitting in her car still, to put out the cigarette!  Even if I thought he might have been concerned about her health, I'd say he was way out of line.  That it sounded more like he just got off on his uniform and the ability to order people around. 

I was pissed when I woke up from my dream.  My pseudo guard was way out of line and had no business ordering me around.  But this cop was even worse.  I can imagine the woman, Sandra Bland, was thinking about the days not so long ago that blacks had to take crap from whites in the south and just bite their tongues. 

This Texas cop seems to be keeping the old days alive.  Oh, yeah, as most of you probably already know, the next day Sandra Bland was found dead in a jail cell she never should have been in.  Trying to keep one's cool when one is being humiliated for no reason is not easy.  And how long has this been going on - out of sight of most people - before anyone began taking the victims seriously.  Only the advent of people's video cameras and a platform to play them has caused enough people to seriously protest. 

Dream Thoughts

I had amazingly real dreams yesterday morning - well I only remember the last one before waking - but I know there were more.  I attribute this having had a dish with lots of (store bought) mushrooms the previous night.

I can see everything vividly still, though the images are fading.  The colors were rich and I could see every detail.  But when I was telling my wife about the dream I realized that while there were conversations in the dream, I couldn't recollect voices the way I could the visuals.  As I think back to other dreams, I know I generally do see in color (and I've heard that not everyone does), but I don't remember hearing sounds they way I see things.  I know they were there, I know that people spoke or that there was music, but it's more like telepathy in my memory that actual hearing of sounds.

I have to pay attention in future dreams.  Do I actually hear sounds but they fade faster than the visuals?  What about smells?  (And I realize as I write this that I can say, "I can't hear sounds" but I can't find the equivalent word for this sentence, "I can see ______."  'Sights' doesn't fit as well as 'sounds' does in the first sentence. Nor 'images.'   Is there an English word that fits there that I'm just blanking on?

As I think about this, there is one exception to the absence of sounds.  There have been times when the clock radio has gone off while I'm still sleeping/dreaming and the voices on the radio mingle with my dreaming and actually redirect my dreams until I wake up and realize the sounds were from the radio.  But those are actual, external sounds I'm hearing in my dreams, not dream sounds in the way that I see the dreams.



OK, now that I've said what's on my mind, let me see what the internet can add to this.

My first search term was:  "Hearing sounds in dreams like seeing things"  resulted in titles related to simply hearing voices, in real life, not in dreams.

Then, 'Dream Sounds' had music for dreaming, but also this from dreamwell which matches my experience:

"Sounds are one of the most invasive things into our dreams.  But rather than wake us up, sounds often become incorporated into our dream, the external sound woven into the fabric of the dream as though it really belonged there."

This person writes, not as though these are her first person experiences, but as though this is a general rule, but she offers no references or evidence of this.  But it does match my experience.  And does 'Dreamwell' refer, as I first thought, to a well from which you get dreams?  Or is it meant more like the term "Sleep Well"?



Next:  "Do People Hear In Dreams?"  At Experience Project people answer the question, "In your dreams (night), do you see/hear/smell/feel/taste?  [This site has those disgusting ads with pictures and tabloid questions, so beware.]  Some commenters say yes, they see, hear, feel, smell.  Not much on taste.  One person wrote:

"There were scents, colors, people talking, and I could remember what they said quite often. The only thing I don't remember is taste. "

I know there was talking and other sounds in my dream, but I don't remember 'hearing' the sounds in the way I saw things.  I just know they were there.  But I still have visual memories of the dream, but not aural ones  By that I mean, I can remember what was said, but I can't hear it, while the images I can both still remember and see. 

Related to all this is a book I've just finished reading A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki in which dreams play a major role.  While there were provocative ideas in the book, overall I found myself impatient for it to end.  If it weren't for my book club, I might not have finished it.  I'll try to put more up about it because there were lots of interesting ideas.  It was an ambitious project, but I don't think she quite pulled it off.  Just mentioning it now because of the importance of dreams in it.  In one case she seems to use a dream to change what is happening in another part of the world.  It didn't work for me.