Paper short abstract:

An documentary in the form of a twenty-first century Arctic road-movie. Viewed through the camera lens of a philosopher, it is inspired by a line from the poem Dreamland. A journey through people-places in Arctic landscapes give viewers glimpse moments of a sublime, the subject of Poe’s poem.

Paper long abstract:

'Dreamland' is documentary film that moves to the rhythm of a poem, Dream-Land, by American romantic poet Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1844. An essay in sound and image, in 'Dreamland' we follow the figure of a native anthropologist as she re-visits a series of Arctic people-places. Alongside this human figure, the non-human figures of the landscape, the people-places of the Arctic, are equally foreground. The being of the Arctic is revealed as flows, as events of passage.

Seen and narrated through a philosophical lens, the journey could be called an Arctic road-movie. A proposition lies at the core of the movie: that moments of a banal sublime can be glimpsed if one perseveres in engaging with some intensity, in the endless ephemeral disorder of the present, of the here-and now. The movie performs this proposition rather than arguing it. Analytically it enacts a flat ontology. The intention is philosophically serious, but the philosophy threads lightly through the text; a golden thread glinting here and there in the sombre Arctic landscape.