Interview by Matt Barry
Amy Hardie’s Edge of Dreaming is a powerful look at the meaning of dreams, and the impact they can have on our lives. In this interview, director Amy Hardie describes the challenges she faced in investigating death and dreaming, her approaches in translating these subjects to the screen, and the impact that making the film had on her own life.
What challenges did you face in visualizing your thoughts on dreaming and death on film?
I love to be behind the camera and to look. So it was a challenge to me to find a way of filming what was happening behind my closed eyes. I had built up a collaboration with Cameron Duguid, the animator, through my science films. However, I wanted to find a way to keep the home-movie style of the film So I used footage taken on my little stills camera at 15 frames a second and then we printed it out and painted and inked on it. I wanted to be as accurate as possible to my dreams and to the shamanic journey. I found images that corresponded closely to what I saw behind closed eyes, and I also wanted to convey the exact feeling that went with those images. So I allowed myself the liberty of, for instance, filming four different pairs of elderly eyes, and cutting them together to create the unease and disorientation I felt in an encounter during the shamanic journey.
In setting out to make your film, were there other films on the subject of dreaming that influenced your approach?
I had been inspired by Agnes Varda’s Les Glaneurs et La Glaneuse for its fluidity, humour and intimacy, moving rapidly between arcane legal pronouncements (in a cabbage field), haunting observation footage and self- scrutiny. I loved this quote from Bunuel:
“The essential element in any work of art is mystery, and generally this is lacking in films…The cinema seems to have been invented to express the life of the subconscious, the roots of which penetrate poetry so deeply. Yet it is almost never used to do this.” (Kyrou, 1963)
I read Bunuel’s comment as a challenge: can a documentary, especially a documentary committed to accurate observation of a year in my life, produce cinema which connects with the audience’s unconscious? I wanted to invite the audience to travel, as I did, between a rationalist starting point and to go deeply into the less accessible areas of their brains.
How did your background as a documentary filmmaker shape the approaches you took in investigating dreams?
I had been trained in the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield, UK, and my teacher there, Herb Di Gioa, was rigorous about not going out with a ‘shopping list’ of items to film, but of responding to what is actually happening in front of the camera, and to having the knowledge of film structure so that everything I shoot is usable. This requires sharp technical skills with sound and image, so that shots and moments are not missed. It was an invaluable training. Through my work with scientists I learnt the importance of scrutiny, of asking tough questions, of devoting myself to the attempt to disprove my own theories and explanation. I also learnt the limits of that approach. I made this film as part of a PhD by practice, which meant that I was able to take the time to investigate and weigh up three different approaches to the dreams: shamanic; scientific and psychotherapeutic.
What influence did your family’s reactions to the events depicted in the film have on your decisions as to what aspects to emphasize in your film?
I was shocked by my son’s response, when I told him in quite a light hearted way about the dream where his father warned me I would die when I was 48. I realized that these ‘death sentences’ cannot be referred to lightly: they have a way of remaining at the back of your mind. After that, I decided not to tell my two younger girls. I did not want them to be in suspense for the whole year, however sceptical we might all have been. So they were surprised by the intensity as I turned my camera on them, and you see them complain in the film. I had the idea that my filming could, if things turned out badly, become an archive for them, so that they could see how I had raised them. I liked the idea that this could even give me a role in my unborn grandchildren’s life, since my kids would have something they could show their own children: “look – this is your grandma and this is how she put us to bed.” My husband works professionally with dreams, and he was insightful and provocative in his response to my own dream. But I felt this was more than a dream – I felt it had come from outside myself.
Did you find it difficult to reconcile your background in producing science documentaries with the dreams and the thoughts they inspired?
I really enjoy holding experiences, concepts, beliefs, up to a strong light and turning them over and seeing what is underneath and what might be related to them. I have no difficulty accepting that events occur at random, and that chance plays a huge role in our lives. I also accept that many events are over-determined – i.e. produced by many causes. The dreams were a challenge to me – I was not sure that were such a thing as the unconscious at the start of the film, and thought it most likely that dreams were equivalent to random patterns thrown onto our retinas by the brain laying down memories. But it was talking to two scientists, Irving Weissman, who pointed out how our brains had evolved and retained dreams for hundreds of thousands of years; and then Mark Solms, who patiently went through the biology of the dreaming brain with me, until I realized that the complex connections between our brains and our bodies meant I really was in danger.
Director Amy Hardie
