The Dream in the Mirror

The Dream in the Mirror, by Louise Milne & Sean Martin (Lanterna Magicka Films 2021), is a 54 min documentary commissioned by Criterion, NYC for their new Blu-ray/streaming restored edition of Tarkovsky’s classic Mirror (1975). In Mirror, Tarkovsky explicitly draws on Renaissance painting, notably Hunters in the Snow (1565) by Pieter Bruegel I. Mirror is a film about the inter-relations of dreams and memory; using documentary newsreel footage to connect individual childhood experience with collective memories of war and trauma. Shot in Moscow, New England, London, and Cambridge, the interviewees in The Dream in the Mirror – witnesses of the same history – comment on and illuminate Tarkovsky’s decisions. We hear from Tarkovsky’s sister and brother-in-law, his composer, his translator, Russian, British and American scholars. Using super8 and archive footage, the film is a visual response to Tarkovsky, bringing together scholarly and practice-based research in the history of dreams.