An experiment in the purest and exciting sense, Dan Schoenbrun set out to create an environment for a few of his favorite filmmakers to experiment together and two years later, produced one of the most original films we’ve ever seen.
In 2014, Schoenbrun (formerly of New York’s IFP and the film lead at Kickstarter) asked five filmmakers, Lily Baldwin (Sleepover LA), Frances Bodomo (Afronauts), Daniel Patrick Carbone (Hide Your Smiling Faces), Josephine Decker (Thou Wast Mild and Lovely), and Lauren Wolkstein (Social Butterfly) to adapt each other’s dreams for the screen. What he thought would be a quick, down and dirty five part web series called collective:unconscious turned into one of the most original feature debuts of 2016.
“In my experience, filmmakers don’t have enough chances to play. It’s easy to lose years of your life trying to get a large-scale project off the ground.”
The web series became an anthology of dreams like no other and last March, collective:unconscious became the first ever omnibus film to premiere in competition at SXSW and has gone on to screen at top festivals across the country (and is coming soon to Made in NY Media Center). With the punk spirit of experimentation spearheading the project, Schoenbrun and the team are now breaking the traditional distribution model by releasing the film for free.
Yep, on August 9th, collective:unconscious will be available for free alongside with a deluxe download complete with bonus features, samples of the directors' previous work, and the original recordings of the dreams they adapted, exclusively on BitTorrent.
“We all agreed to make something as strange and as adventurous as possible, and not to worry about our commercial prospects. Commercial value isn’t the same thing as artistic value. We think we succeeded in making something unapologetically weird, so why try now to fit it into a marketplace that doesn’t value weird? ”
Today, along with the announcement of their distribution plans, the team debuts the trailer, a clip, a song from the original score, and an exclusive full segment from the film, “Beemus, It’ll End in Tears” directed by Lauren Wolkstein.
Instant Download / Stream
collective:unconscious - Trailer.mp4
collective:unconscious - Clip 1.mp4
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collective:unconscious - DREAM ONE- Beemus It’ll End In Tears.mp4
collective:unconscious - Clip 2.mp4
collective:unconscious - Score - We’ll End Our Session Here.mp3
collective:unconscious - Poster.jpeg
collective:unconscious - Black Soil Green Grass.jpeg
collective:unconscious - First Day Out.jpeg
collective:unconscious - Beemus It’ll End In Tears.jpeg
collective:unconscious - Everybody Dies.jpeg
collective:unconscious - Swallowed.jpeg