Last Night, I Had a Dream

This short film explores anxiety experienced in dreams. It is both a reflection of a societal precondition as well as a contextually variable condition. The fear of losing something in a dream has been widely discussed and investigated in psychoanalytical theory and in filmic practices such as those of David Lynch. With the downgrade of the South African Rand to 'Junk Status' the relationship between the economy, white monopoly capital and international trade relations; is evidence of, and a contributing factor to social anxiety. This experience of anxiety is epitomized by a story which my friend told me of her trip to Russia, where she kept waking up in fear that she had lost her South African passport, which she was required to carry on her at all times. It is this general atmosphere of surveillance and state paranoia which this film engages. "The Inspector was a great patron of the arts and industry, but most of all he loved government banknotes. ‘There’s nothing finer than banknotes,’ he used to say. ‘They don’t need feeding, take up very little room and slip nicely into the pocket. And they don’t break if you drop them" (The Nose by Nikolai Gogol: 1836; 58).