Jessica Bardsley’s Life Without Dreams contemplates the intersections between insomnia, the natural world, and the unrelenting pace and pressures of a capitalist society. Through voice-overs and on-screen text, Bardsley parses her own experiences with insomnia and articulates the consequences of sleeplessness on our bodies, minds, and ability to dream. Closeups of nocturnal animals—the startling eyes of an owl, the velvet wings of a bat—are intercut with lunar landscapes. Scenes of people sleeping appear in arresting photographic negative. All are woven throughout this evocative meditation on rest and unrest, consciousness and dreams, interiority and the cosmos, and our tech-saturated world. ST

Q&A following screening