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Poster for The Dream Machine
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Released
1986 · FILM

The Dream Machine

Runtime
35 min
Documentary

Synopsis

A 16mm anthology of experimental Super 8 films by Derek Jarman, Michael Kostiff, Cerith Wyn Evans, and John Maybury, with framing footage by Tim Burke of Brion Gysin using a dream machine. Jarman's contribution is a version of his 1977 *Art and the Pose* (also known as *Arty the Pose*), refilmed at 3fps, with a musical soundtrack. Jarman planned *The Dream Machine* as a commemoration of William Burroughs and Gysin's 1982 visit to the UK, and received initial funding from the Arts Council in 1983, then rethought the project as a portmanteau film featuring Gysin alone. The production remained in limbo until 1986, when James Mackay obtained completion funding from the British Film Institute. (Since this film was released on VHS accompanied by Jarman's *Broken English: Three Songs* by Marianne Faithfull, *T.G.: Psychic Rally in Heaven* and *Pirate Tape* under the umbrella title *The Dream Machine*, synopses of this film have often muddled up its details with those of the earlier films.)

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 12

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Shot by Tim Burke

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