Films and Dreams: Imagination and Perception
Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

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Films create a dreamlike state for the spectator, one that can be shared. Cinema creates communal dreams, expressing an individual as well as a collective unconscious. Perceiving in a dream as well as in a film can alter reality. Using some concepts of gestalt psychology and wish fulfillment, plus the ideas of Freud and Christian Metz, we will explore some general ideas of film/dreaming/unconscious and analyze specific films that enact dreams and stimulate our imagination. The lines between screen and life, conscious and unconscious, perception and reality, are increasingly blurred and mutually influential. Studying films like Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound," Christopher Nolan's "Inception," Benh Zeitlin's "Beasts of the Southern Wild," Terence Malick's "Tree of Life," Danny Boyle's "Millions," Damien Chazelle's"La La Land," Phil Alden Robinson's "Field of Dreams," and Ang Lee's "Life of Pi" can deepen our understanding of how imagination and perception work in film viewing and in life.