Bohemian Cinema By Jonathan Pacheco

Screenings x Segmented Winks

Tags: SXSW, Festivals, Polyphasic

I’m finally going to SXSW. I’ve come into a little bit of money this year, so I plan on at least attending the Austin festival as well as the Toronto International Film Festival in September. As for SXSW, which takes place next month and just announced its lineup, I’m not sure what strategy I’ll implement when choosing what films and panels see.

The only other festival I’ve ever attended was one day of the Dallas Video Festival, so you can probably guess that I’ll be a little overwhelmed, but that’s the fun of it, isn’t it? I’m waiting to hear the buzz on most of these SXSW films, but there aren’t as many high-profile ones as there were last year, which may be a good thing, allowing me to see smaller films without the temptation of the bigger ones; there’s the philosophy of intentionally avoiding the big ones that are almost guaranteed U.S. distribution, while catching some good, smaller ones that may never again play in Texas.

Either way, I’m going to pack those screenings and panels as tight as I possibly can.

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I’ve had many false starts when it comes to polyphasic sleep, but I really think I’ve finally got it going. I would often remember to take my naps late at night, so naturally I’d sleep right through my alarms. But the past couple of days I’ve been working harder and napping in the morning and early afternoon. A tight schedule has affected my afternoon and evening naps, but today I made the time, and I’m feeling confident.

The naps are experiences in themselves. For one, until I hit the REM phase, I’m fully aware of my surroundings, hearing everything that goes on, even though I’m technically “asleep.” I can tell the difference between this sleep mode and just simply resting with my eyes closed, predominantly because of what happens when I “wake up.” I get the same jolt that you get when you wake up from a night’s sleep, and it’s only then do I realize that I was sleeping through everything I was thinking and hearing before. It’s an odd experience that everyone goes through, only after a full night of sleep, no one remembers it. It’s enabled me to be more aware of the transition to REM, where I start to experience dreams and subconscious thoughts and tangents.

Another thing that’s come about from the many naps are lucid dreams. For a while, I was having at least 1 or 2 semi-lucid dreams a week; I soon began planning what I would attempt to do in my next dream. It’s like a virtual world with no limits, and I even frightened myself with how attached I became to that alternate reality.

I had contemplated writing a movie based on my dreams and what I chose to do in them, but I feared the “doesn’t want to live in reality” motif has been played, and I knew that my portrayal of dreams could never measure up to David Lynch’s.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to try.