Review: Kinaesthesia Explores Dreams in Early Cinema
Gerald Fox’s documentary, Kinaesthesia, offers a scholarly yet fascinating exploration of how early cinema pioneers utilized techniques to mimic the experience of dreams and human consciousness. Based on an essay by the late Harvard professor Vlada Petrić, the film argues that directors from the 1910s and 1920s activated viewers' brains similarly to dreaming. The documentary features clips from iconic works such as Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s Un Chien Andalou, D.W. Griffith’s The Avenging Conscience, and Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush. It serves as a comprehensive overview of experimental early cinema, highlighting German expressionists like F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, Soviet filmmakers Sergei Eisenstein and Oleksandr Dovzhenko, and avant-garde artist Maya Deren. While the review notes that Fox’s narration is somewhat dramatic and the reenactments add little value, it praises the expert editing and erudite approach. The film is described as feeling like a film-school lecture but remains essential viewing for cinema history enthusiasts, uncovering lost gems like Teinosuke Kinugasa’s A Page of Madness.
Wire timeline
Review: Kinaesthesia Explores Dreams in Early Cinema
Gerald Fox’s documentary, Kinaesthesia, offers a scholarly yet fascinating exploration of how early cinema pioneers utilized techniques to mimic the experience of dreams and human consciousness. Based on an essay by the late Harvard professor Vlada Petrić, the film argues that directors from the 1910s and 1920s activated viewers' brains similarly to dreaming. The documentary features clips from iconic works such as Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s Un Chien Andalou, D.W. Griffith’s The Avenging Conscience, and Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush. It serves as a comprehensive overview of experimental early cinema, highlighting German expressionists like F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, Soviet filmmakers Sergei Eisenstein and Oleksandr Dovzhenko, and avant-garde artist Maya Deren. While the review notes that Fox’s narration is somewhat dramatic and the reenactments add little value, it praises the expert editing and erudite approach. The film is described as feeling like a film-school lecture but remains essential viewing for cinema history enthusiasts, uncovering lost gems like Teinosuke Kinugasa’s A Page of Madness.
The Guardian