In 1920, Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr Caligari appeared on screens, an essential work of German expressionism and modernity in cinema. For great Amercan cristics like Parker Tyler and P. Adams Sitney, Cesare sleepwalker character, who is at the centre of the movie, was to have a fundamental impact on post-war American avant-garde and on all dreamlike tradition in cinema. Either called trance-films or trip-films those entire movies are dreams, impregnated by symbolism, eroticism and disturbing strangeness, in which the director-protagonist wanders in a hypnagogic state. In connection with my upcoming book, Potemkine et le cinéma halluciné (Rouge Profond Edition), this viewing takes you to the borders of the hypnotic and the unconscious.

-Maxime Lachaud