{"id":14911,"date":"2014-02-18T03:06:19","date_gmt":"2014-02-18T03:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=14911"},"modified":"2014-02-19T05:27:10","modified_gmt":"2014-02-19T05:27:10","slug":"the-dream-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2014\/02\/18\/the-dream-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dream Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This is a 35-minute anthology film from 1986 with a very painterly, poetic (for want of a better term) quality of a kind I’ve not seen for some time in queer cinema. The reasons for this can be debated at greater length than I care to attempt, but it’s notable that a feature of the work of Derek Jarman\u2014one of the featured directors\u2014was an approach that was always happy to dispense with naturalism and the aping of familiar film and television narratives. In place of Jarman’s visionary approach we now have the “ordinary gay lives” of Weekend<\/em><\/a> and Looking<\/em><\/a>. This may satisfy those eager to see their own lives reflected on the screen but I’m usually expecting more from my cinema than another mirror held up to mundane reality. (And a very circumscribed reality, at that.)<\/p>\n

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The theme of The Dream Machine<\/em> is Bryon Gysin’s hallucination-inducing artwork of the same name. Brief clips by Tim Burke of Gysin sat with eyes closed in front of his flickering cylinder form the connective tissue between sections by directors Jarman, Michael Kostiff, Cerith Wyn Evans, and John Maybury. We can take these as either the dreams of those behind the camera or perhaps the visions seen by Gysin behind his eyelids. Needless to say there’s a fair amount of naked male flesh on offer, presented in a matter-of-fact manner or as the embodiments of some personal symbolism. The film can be seen here<\/a> in not very flattering quality. Both Cerith Wyn Evans and John Maybury started out as assistants on Jarman’s films. Wyn Evans appears briefly in Caravaggio<\/em><\/a> (1986) but is now better known as an artist, while Maybury went on to direct another excellent artist biopic, Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon<\/em><\/a> (1998).<\/p>\n

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Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Jarman (all this maddening beauty)<\/a>
\n\u2022 Sebastiane by Derek Jarman<\/a>
\n\u2022 A Journey to Avebury by Derek Jarman<\/a>
\n\u2022 Derek Jarman\u2019s music videos<\/a>
\n\u2022 Derek Jarman\u2019s Neutron<\/a>
\n\u2022 Mister Jarman, Mister Moore and Doctor Dee<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Tempest illustrated<\/a>
\n\u2022 In the Shadow of the Sun by Derek Jarman<\/a>
\n\u2022 Derek Jarman at the Serpentine<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Angelic Conversation<\/a>
\n\u2022 The life and work of Derek Jarman<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a 35-minute anthology film from 1986 with a very painterly, poetic (for want of a better term) quality of a kind I’ve not seen for some time in queer cinema. The reasons for this can be debated at greater length than I care to attempt, but it’s notable that a feature of the … Continue reading “The Dream Machine”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,7,5,41],"tags":[8450,5789,226,686,511,433,5792,5791,6333,5790],"class_list":["post-14911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-film","category-gay","category-sculpture","tag-avebury","tag-bryon-gysin","tag-caravaggio","tag-cerith-wyn-evans","tag-derek-jarman","tag-francis-bacon-artist","tag-john-maybury","tag-michael-kostiff","tag-sebastiane","tag-tim-burke"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-3Sv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}