Dreams

Robin D. G. Kelley is a professor of history at the University of California Los Angeles. His books include Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination; Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times; Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times...

Paul Coates is a professor emeritus of film studies at Western University, Ontario. Previously, he taught at Georgia, McGill, and Aberdeen, and his books include The Story of the Lost Reflection (1985), The Gorgon’s Gaze (1991), Lucid Dreams: The Cinema...

Howard Hampton has written for Film Comment, Artforum, and many other publications. He is the author of Born in Flames: Termite Dreams, Dialectical Fairy Tales, and Pop Apocalypses.

Jonathan Rosenbaum’s books include Cinematic Encounters: Interviews and Dialogues (2018), Cinematic Encounters 2: Portraits and Polemics (2019), and In Dreams Begin Responsibilities: A Jonathan Rosenbaum Reader (2024).

Aug 6, 2019 — Once, in 1977, Werner Herzog read a news item about a volcano that was supposed to erupt in Guadeloupe and one man living there who refused to evacuate with the rest of the island’s population. Herzog being Herzog, he immediately...

Mar 23, 2017 — With a monumental body of work spanning nearly six decades, thirty feature films, and a staggering array of styles and genres, Akira Kurosawa has been a cornerstone of our collection since we released Seven Samurai as our second Criterion edition...

Nov 22, 2016 — This month, we’ve brought two new Criterion editions to the United Kingdom: Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, a visually sumptuous showcase of the Japanese master at the height of his imaginative powers, and Punch-Drunk Love, Paul Thomas Anderson’s deliriously eccentric take on...

Nov 18, 2016 — Artists across all mediums have long been obsessed with the challenge of evoking dream states, but film—with its oneiric combinations of light and shadow, and its ability to manipulate time and space—has particularly uncanny access to our nighttime reveries. Whether...

Nov 18, 2016 — A dazzling mix of folklore, myth, and the director’s own nighttime visions, Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams represents a late-career burst of creativity from one of the masters of Japanese cinema. Over the course of the film’s eight surreal episodes, Kurosawa moves...

Mar 29, 2016 — Today, we’re celebrating the release on Blu-ray and DVD of Les Blank’s legendary Leon Russell music documentary A Poem Is a Naked Person. And while we’re on the topic of fascinating nonfiction filmmaking, we’re also taking a look at a...