CHAPTER 8
Dreams of Alexeieff
IT HAS BEEN ARGUED for many decades that people dream in black and white. Today this idea is rejected, but it was common currency at the time of Alexandre Alexeieff and certainly had a basis in the consciousness of the dreaming person. The memory of nocturnal images is blurred, based more on impressions than on images, echoing badly remembered plots – then completed by conscious reinterpretation: a bit like black-and-white cinema, which has evocation characteristics much superior to realistic colour film.
It is therefore no coincidence that Alexeieff, intimately indebted to the dream and to memory for his creation, has always done – when he wanted to make art and not advertising – black-and-white films, and that ...
