Événement

The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society: Dream Films 1926-1972

The members of the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society were filled with the desire to participate in one of the great intellectual movements of the 20th century: psycho-analysis. Additionally, like the Amateur Cine League (founded the same year), many members wished to tap into the power for self expression afforded by technologies like home movie cameras that were newly accessible to ordinary people. This screening presents a range of their amateur films, which reveal an incredibly brave, unapologetic exploration of their inner lives.

Starting in 1926, the Society held annual competitions in which members recreated their dreams on film and analyzed them. Inspired by Freuds proposition in The Interpretation of Dreams that in dreams, ideas and wishes are dramatized as mental pictures, they decided to put theory into practice, creating films that recorded the hopes, fears and fantasies of a changing cross section of Coney Island through the 20th century. Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Freud's visit to Coney Island, the program will be in three parts including a short, illustrated lecture introducing the work of the Society, a screening of Coney Island (1917) by Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle and nine award winning Dream Films.

Co-presented by Third Eye Cinema.