The Edge of Dreaming

“This is an extraordinary film and we were unanimous in awarding it Best Documentary in Kiev International Film Festival: it is wise, it is a thriller, it is an intimate authentic chronicle of family life” Kiev, Otar Iosseliani

“This is a story in real time that takes in love, death and fear. It is a journey headlong into what we can know about the workings of our mind. It also has the pace, humour, and compelling narrative tension of the best fiction movies” US, Jonathan Stack

“Moving, simple yet complex, poetic, and candid. The interweaving of family, work, fear, journeys and dilemmas is seamless. Beautiful and impressive.”
Israel: Professor Jacob Raz

“Hardie’s film sums up all we fear and admire in our own psyches… beautifully shot and constructed. The edge she speaks of is the line between the conscious and the subconscious; madness and reason; this world and another. It’s a hugely empowering film and perfect to open Guth Gafa.” Eire: Neasa Ni Chianáin

“a work of art through its descent into the unconscious, and the outstanding beauty that exists in the images.. an extraordinary story which questions a lot of our basic understandings of health, sickness, death, and the nature of dreaming” Spain: Josep Morales

“Stunning images...visually elegant …mixed brilliantly and without any predictability..an original.” Netherlands: Tue Steen Muller

“Eye opening and shot through with humour. How does this all end? With a startling surprise” Huffington Post: Karin Badt

REVIEW by Tue Steen Mueller at Internation Documentary Festival Amsterdam
Idfa 4/09
Skrevet den 25-11-2009 16:24:07 af Tue Steen Müller

There you go, a real camera stylo personal essay film with an original, personal style.
I was completely taken in by the beauty of the film, "The Edge of Dreaming", of Scottish filmmaker Amy Hardie.
It touched me, made me reflect on my own life, my family life, my growing up, at the same time as the intensity of storytelling
makes you stay in an atmosphere of listening and watching and reflecting.

For me this is what a good documentary can be with many layers, a mature commentary,
about Life and Death, and told in numerous stylistical lines. You can´t help fall in love with the family of Amy Hardie.
They live in (Scottish) nature surroundings that a camera can only adore.
And you can´t help admire the manner Hardie, using rough home video material,
goes visually elegantly back in time and forward again.
We get her story about her first husband, who died years ago, but who comes back to her in a dream to "announce"
that she will die when she is 48 years of age.

There are dream sequences, and there are stunning images that make me think of classic Dutch paintings.
It is all mixed brilliantly and without any predictability. I better stop my praise and give you the prose of the producers
from the idfa catalogue:

This is the story of a rational, sceptical woman, a mother and wife, who does not remember her dreams.
Except once, when she dreamt her horse was dying. She woke so scared she went outside in the night. She found him dead.
The next dream told her she would die herself, when she was 48.
The film explores life, dreams and death in the context of a warm, loving family whose happiness is increasingly threatened
as the dream seems to be proving true. The final confrontation, returning inside the dream with a shaman, reveals a surprising twist to the tale.

Scotland, 2009, 73 mins. - and (bravo) with the support of ZDF/arte, More4 and VPRO plus of course Scottish Screen.

REVIEW by Stuart Delves
14 September 2009

Tear up the rules of Documentary. With The Edge of Dreaming they no longer apply.
Yes, there’s an investigation – into the nature and meaning of dreams. And yes, there’s objectivity galore,
with the views and insights of some of the world’s most eminent physiologists and psychologists.
But along with an outer probing into the latest scientific research this is a very personal journey into
the neural pathways of the brain, the darkest hours of the night and the indelible fibres of past relationships.

Amy Hardie has three dreams: three deeply disturbing dreams.
In the first she dreams her horse dies and she goes out into the early dawn to discover him dead.
In the second she hears the voice of her deceased former partner, the father to her son: the voice says she will not make 48.
It’s her forty eighth year. In the third she dreams of how she’ll die.

Are these omens she wonders and asks those she trusts the most.
Omens or the psychic flotsam of lunar downtime they shake her seemingly perfect life as a life science documentary maker
living in a rural idyll with a lovely, phlegmatic husband (a psychoanalyst) and happy children.
She lets us glimpse this life and the life that lead up to this – childhood and former relationship - through fly-on-the-wall footage,
old home movies and stills montages. At the same time she leads us into inner worlds, the landscapes of the mind and brain,
through a skilful interweaving of illustrations, animated diagrams, tonal superimposition and startling, beautiful imagery.

She has a truly gifted editor in Ling Lee who layers this story through seamless cutting and overlays
so it feels more like being in the labyrinth of a Marquez or Calvino novel than a documentary – well actually,
by the end you feel like you’re in a dream yourself and that Amy’s quest is universal:
to understand the vast non-rational dimension within, that ‘civilised’ societies pretend is of no consequence.

It’s this intricate storytelling, with its own unhurried rhythm shadowing the ancient hills and gulleys of her Borders homeland,
that makes this something other than what one usually expects from documentary.
This is not slick film making. It’s too personal for that. But it’s beautiful and deeply considered.
And I’d have beautiful and deeply considered rather than slick any day. The thing is, though, we just don’t get that any day.
We get it very rarely – more in the poetic masterpieces of a Louis Malle or an Ang Lee.
And what’s ultimately so surprising about this film is that it’s made by an attractive middle class white professional woman
(and mother, daughter, sister, wife) yet is so distinctly ill-fitting into any stereotype or presumption that that definition arouses.
When she films herself gaunt and breathless in hospital with a suspected collapsed lung we feel her weariness
and admire her steely strength; and when she crosses the accepted boundaries of our cultural upbringing
and puts herself in the hands of a shaman we feel - not just witness - her fear and bravery along with
the primitive and awesome power of the spirit world guarded by the spectres of her own terror.

This is a film of an extraordinary journey. It’s deeply moving – there was one in our select audience who was openly weeping at the end.
When the lights come up you feel you’ve been a long way (on both the superhighways and dusty roads of knowledge).
It’s a profound piece of work that is earthy and redemptive at the same time as being reflective, questioning and diligent,
so that the overall effect is emotionally destabilising and intellectually challenging. And yes, it’s life affirmative,
its yes wrested from the mocking jaws of death. The 48th birthday party with the fire-spitting carnival snake and
the saxophone toots and trills feels like the best birthday party ever.