OSHER 198 - Film and Dreams: Imagination and the Unconscious

Films create a dreamlike state for the spectator, one that can be shared with the other viewers. Cinema creates shared dreams, expressing the individual, as well as a collective unconscious. Using some concepts of Gestalt psychology and wish fulfillment, plus the ideas of Freud and Jung, we will explore some general ideas of film/dreaming/unconscious and analyze specific films that enact dreams and stimulate our imagination. The lines between media and life, digitality and reality, are increasingly blurred. But studying films like Spellbound, Inception, Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Dark Knight Rises, Tree of Life, What Dreams May Come, Millions, La La Land, On Body and Soul, Paprika, The Good Night, and Jacob's Ladder can deepen our understanding of what meanings arise, and how they do so.