Dreamers Often Lie is a dissection of the original play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. Taking the three major themes present in the play, love, violence, and youth, we’ve utilised the key techniques in poetic and experimental cinema to reconstruct these fragments into a new way of telling this story, whereby narrative is abandoned for theme and evocation in the aim to fragment, and then reconsider, a story loved and recognised in the cultural zeitgeist.
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Conceptualised and shot by Juanita Ebbs, Nadia Harari, and Leslie Hall.
Edited by Juanita Ebbs.
Edited in part by Leslie Hall.
Remix and Soundscape by Nadia Harari.
Text by Juanita Ebbs.
Supervising producer Hannah Braisier.
Produced at RMIT University Poetic Video: Listing the Everyday Media Studio 2021.
Click through to the films website here.
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In their thesis Poetic Approach to Documentary: Discomfort of Form, Rhetorical Strategies and Aesthetic Experience, Belinda Frankham describes the poetic list as "the organisation of complexity", as renegotiating "territories of evocation and experiential knowing", a "process of wondering - indeterminate as opposed to determining or defining." This is a poetic list of things that 'face away'. My entry includes quite literal entries - the back of someones head, a satellite dish, the back of a chair - but also more conceptual entries such as a closed draw, the inside of an analog camera, a tip or pile of rubbish. I invite you to consider things faced away that mightn't literally or physically face away. In this way, my list is an infinite list, or a the list that continues on in the audiences mind - be it as the audience mentally continues adding to the list, or consider the organisation of the list. Frankham spoke about this beautifully in reference to Umberto Eco's work: "Eco develops an idea of the etcetera of the list whereby the elements included refer outward to possible inclusions." (Frankham 2013, pg. 140).
The last listed item* is the launch of Voyager 1, which is still moving outward (facing away) and will continue to do so for all eternity (etcetera). On board is a 'golden record' containing a list of entries that astronomer Carl Sagan and writer, producer, and director Ann Druyan compiled with the purpose of communicating humanity and our history to any extra terrestrial life that may come across it.
*Kind of. The back of the head turns to face the camera but cuts before doing so, because then it would be "facing toward" and no longer belong on the list. The end demonstrates the boundaries of this list.
This montage is a result of a creative exploration where I used the sacred reading of Lectio Divina as a prompt. The parameter of the experiment was that I had to edit together a clip based off my results from the reading with a catalogue of footage I had already collected. This prompt was drawn from 'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close' by Jonathan Safran Foer, found on page 113:
'I was fifteen, she was seventeen, we sat together on the grass while our fathers spoke inside, how could we have been any younger?'
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From this prompt, I drew a feeling of young love, youth, and the ever-looming promise of responsibility and adult hood.
This montage is a result of a creative exploration where I used the sacred reading of Lectio Divina as a prompt. The parameter of the experiment was that I had to edit together a clip based off my results from the reading with a catalogue of footage I had already collected. This prompt was drawn from 'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close' by Jonathan Safran Foer, found on page 40:
'Then I did some research on the Internet about the locks of New York, and I found out a lot of useful information.'
From this prompt, I drew on systems known and unknown, threatening and supportive, structures that keep one out and the structures that home you.
This montage is a result of a creative exploration where I used the sacred reading of Lectio Divina as a prompt. The parameter of the experiment was that I had to edit together a clip based off my results from the reading with a catalogue of footage I had already collected. This prompt was drawn from 'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close' by Jonathan Safran Foer found on page 295:
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I pulled the string around my neck , and made it so the key to our apartment was on my back and Dad’s key rested on the pouch of my overalls, over Mr. Black’s biography, over the Band-Aid, over my heart.
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From this prompt, I was reminded of the layers of intimacy and vulnerability, and the balance between privacy and observation.