Waking Up in a Dream

Birth, death.
Night, day.
Mind, matter.
Heaven, hell.
Nothing, everything.

Resting at the heart of Waking Up in a Dream is Brooklyn’s legacy of co-existing diversity—cultural, spiritual, racial, economic, and personal—using this ethos to engage the artist and audience relationship to the extraordinary community that calls Brooklyn, and therefore this world, home.

An intricate soundscape of urban life, the natural world, and original music composition weaves through disembodied musings of “Mother Nature” as she recalls memories, thoughts, and questions during her final moments resting on her deathbed, preparing for what’s to come:

“You were born understanding that you had something to remember.”

Her contemplations sow together conversations about spiritual traditions, meaning, culture, philosophy, death, and love with residents ranging from children to elders. A Trinidadian barber, a boxing coach and his four sons, a Buddhist monk, an immigrant musician, an Imam, a brownstone superintendent. The wide-ranging interviews reveal how the normal human imagination parallels the art we revere and how our stories mirror larger histories, myths, and identities.

The film conjures mosaics of lush, impressionistic, dreamlike images with reverence for the quotidian observations that make up our ordinary lives. A dynamic yet contemplative rhythm mirroring the cycle of life, death, and rebirth builds sediments of time and story in the places that have hosted the aspirations and experiences of countless individuals.

A rich polyphonic portrait of humanity and its environments, Waking Up in a Dream invites you to meditate on the slippery nature of memory, reverie, time, and the enduring power of conscious awareness.