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Instant Dreams
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Instant Dreams
IDFA 2017

Instant Dreams

Willem Baptist
Netherlands
2017
91 min
World Premiere
Festival history

There could hardly be a more telling contrast between the analog and digital eras than the beautifully blurry memories captured in a Polaroid picture and the thousands of pin-sharp photos on an iPhone. In this ambitious visual essay, Willem Baptist explores the visionary genius of Edwin H. Land, the inventor of the Polaroid camera. Even today, all sorts of people are keeping his instant dream alive. Former Polaroid employee Stephen Herchen moved from the United States to Europe to work in a laboratory developing the 2.0 version of Polaroid. Christopher Bonanos, the author of Instant: The Story of Polaroid, tells us, "When I heard Polaroid would stop making film, it felt like a close friend had died." Artist Stefanie Schneider, who is working with the last of her stock of Polaroid film, is using the blurring that occurs with expired film as an additional aesthetic layer in her photographic work. The soundtrack is as evocative as the sometimes hypnotically expressive imagery, with archive footage, interviews and gorgeous chemical reactions crisscrossing paths in a veritable rollercoaster of color and light.

Credits
Director
Involved TV Channel
    NTR
    NTR
World Sales
    Public Film Sales & Distribution
    Public Film Sales & Distribution
Distribution for the Netherlands
    Cinema Delicatessen
    Cinema Delicatessen
Screening copy
    Pieter van Huystee Film
    Pieter van Huystee Film

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