The Night Garden (2022)

The Night Garden is an experimental, movement-based short film, shot entirely on iPhone6. Through a cartography of associations, imagery, and poetry, its surrealist episodes offer a harvest of ideas, images, and meditations for the dream feast. The series of seven vignettes rendered from dreams and the unconscious conjures an array of characters and scenarios including: Chekhov in an existential crisis with Picasso's Lover of Absinthe; a film noir that follows the dreams and waking trances of a man, a woman, and a herd of tiny cattle; a kaleidoscopic vision of a woman's interactions with an imaginary friend and a ghost; a caterpillar woman's transformation and foray into a garden of fountains and marble statues; three mythological creatures who unleash the contents of a jewel box; and a family confronting their heritage and communing with each other throughout the city and forest. Co-created by Daria Karpova, Anastasia Nesterova, Marissa Nielsen-Pincus, Tom Pearson, and Renata Zhigulina, the episodes interweave characters, objects, and imagery that thread together a short film which follows a nightly dream sequence. The work is built through a practice of dream-sharing and associations. Filmed on location in St. Petersburg, Russia, The Night Garden is shot exclusively on smart phones (iPhone 6).