Student film investigates dreamworld

Home Culture Student film investigates dreamworld

Paul Poiselle, a 19th century French poet, paces the streets of downtown Hillsdale ravenously puffing on a weary pipe. His long mustache tickles his lips and reaches for his twitching jawline, the tips of his mustache bobbing a bit with each fervent step. Senior Mark Keller follows the foreign figure with a camera to capture the scene on tape.

Poiselle is the main character in Paul Lafarge’s book, “The Facts of Winter,” published in 2005 as a collection of brief dreams from people in 1881 Paris. Lafarge took actual stories from residents of Paris and for each one transcribed a twisted version as a dream, often communicating a deeper message through the changes he makes and always leaving the reader unsure as to what exactly is going on.

It is this strange and captivating book that Keller is adapting into a feature length film.

“It’s a film not with a story but a film about stories,” Keller said. “Lafarge took these horrifying stories of real things that happened and turned them into dreams that often commented on things going on in Paris. You get to see for a few minutes the struggles of characters in their subconscious and how they’re resolved or unresolved in different ways.”

Senior Josh Koczman stars as Paul Poiselle. He and Keller have already filmed scenes in downtown Hillsdale.

“My character appears intermittently and sometimes in some of the dreams as well as the preface part to it,” Koczman said. “Sometimes I’ll read some of the ‘Facts of Winter’ shortly before filming just to get me in the mindset of the project.”

Keller intends to film all the dreams with the help of a cast of 30 Hillsdale students inclucing Koczman, who is also his creative consultant. His budget is set at $5,000 which he plans to raise from kickstarter.com, a site that allows artists to propose ideas online for patrons to fund through donations.

“It’s not the sort of movie you’ve ever seen before,” Keller said. “That doesn’t mean it is entirely incoherent, but you just have to approach it from a different way.”

Keller will use different mediums including still illustrations, stop motion animation and claymation. This technique will allow Keller to stay within budget on scenes that are more difficult to film, but he also hopes the changing mediums will add to the dreamlike quality and style of the book.

“While dreams never make sense when you’re awake,” Keller said. “But when you’re asleep and seeing it, it takes on a logic of its own which you can’t really explain but you can feel.”

Keller plans to finish filming this semester and editing this summer. He will send the film to film festivals and hopes it will help his dreams of becoming a professional director become a reality.

“In a dream the facts are different, but the rules are all the same,” Keller said. “People still behave with human motivations even though crazy things take place. It’s showing us more about reality through dreams.”

 

 

                                                                     charper@hillsdale.edu