Dreamscapes: A Static Vision Film Festival

Overview

It has been more than a year since Static Vision hosted its last physical film festival, with Hyperlinks pondering the online world and taking over Marrickville's Pink Flamingo Cinema back in February 2020. For the film collective's follow-up fest, it's getting dreamy — in the same spot, and via a three-day, 12-movie program that's all about imagined worlds, fantastical visions and the places we journey to when we slumber.

Running from Friday, May 14–Sunday, May 16, Dreamscapes: A Static Vision Film Festival kicks off with a 15th-anniversary screening of Satoshi Kon's Paprika — which is the type of movie absolutely everyone needs to see at least once on a big screen. The premise: in the near future, a device lets a therapist enter patients' dreams. And yes, you now know where Inception got its inspiration.

Other highlights: documentary Ecstasy, which features music by David Lynch and Lykke Li; Slow Machine, about an actress who meets a NYPD counter-terrorism specialist; Window Boy Would Also Like to Have a Submarine, which plays with magical portals; and Dreaming Under Capitalism, an experimental doco that tasks 12 people with remembering and analysing their dreams about work.

Naturally, A Nightmare on Elm Street is also on the bill — the original 1984 horror flick, not the terrible remake. And the sublime Waking Life has the honour of closing out the program, with Richard Linklater's Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy and Wiley Wiggins-starring animated film marking its 20th anniversary.

Shorts films will also grace Dreamscapes' screens, with the lineup also including DJs, a live-streamed opening night set and an area that's all about dreamlike games.