Somnambulist
2016 · USA
Directed by Cole Mitchek
Genres: experimental
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
An experimental short journey through the mind of a somnambulist, drifting through a nightmare of fragmented memories and possible visions of the future, with every image refracted through found optical distorters.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Shooting an entire dream-state film through peepholes and water bottles is a rebuke of conventional cinematography — the kind of low-fi conceptual audacity the vault is missing.
Shooting through peepholes, kaleidoscopes, and water bottles is a Brakhage-lineage gesture I respect — the camera becoming the dreaming mind rather than its witness. Whether Mitcham earns the Anger comparison depends on the rhythm of the dream rather than the apparatus, but the apparatus is sound.
Shot through peepholes, kaleidoscopes, and water bottles, so the optical distortion isn't a metaphor for the dreaming mind — it IS the dreaming mind. That's the kind of single-constraint craft choice I'll always champion.