The Freudian feature documentary Interpretation of Dreams, produced during perestroika, introduced for the first time the world of Freud’s ideas to audiences in the former Soviet Union, since his works were banned by Communist censorship. The film juxtaposed a dialog between the filmmaker and the patriarch himself and the history of the Soviet Union and Europe.

FESTIVALS & SCREENINGS:

DALI & BEYOND FILM SERIES
Salvador Dali Museum, Saint Petersburg, Florida
March 2009

FILM SERIES VER SIN VERTOV  (WITHOUT VERTOV) LA CASA ENCENDIDA
MADRID, SPAIN, 2005.

GLASNOST FILM SERIES FOR THE FILM SOCIETY AT LINCOLN CENTER
NEW YORK, 1997

FILM FORUM,
TWO WEEK LIMITED RUN,
NEW YORK, 1992

NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS SERIES
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
NEW YORK, 1991

SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL, 1991

LONDON JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL, 1991

NEW YORK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL, 1991

KRAKOW INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
POLAND, 1991

PHILADELPHIA JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL, 1991

IDFA, OPENING NIGHT
AMSTERDAM, 1990

ROBERT FLAHERTY INTERNATIONAL FILM SEMINAR,
1990 and 1991

GRAND PRIX
ALL-UNION DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL
VORONEZH, USSR 1990

PRESS

"Interesting" and "provocative"
Vincent Canby, The New York Times.

"A strange and superb film"
Matthew Flamm, New York Post.

"Astonishing marriage of Freudian thinking and history”
Boston Globe

"A truly magical and extraordinary film…"
Cinema Independent, London.

"A film for intellectuals, packed with consequential ideas"
Leah Garchik, San Francisco Chronicle.

BLOGOSPHERE:

"The Soviet Union’s collapse, and the turmoil, and the mental and moral disarray, that ensued in the region, initially led to a spate of (mostly pedophilic) pornographic films and, worse, hateful, reactionary, proto-tsarist assaults, nearly all of them strident, coarse and incompetently made. Preferable are honest, serious films that address aspects of the Soviet regime, or Soviet society and daily life, in an analytical rather than an attack mode. One of these is Andrei Zagdansky’s documentary The Interpretation of Dreams (1990) which, in a stream of haunting images both archival and new, celebrates the dissolution of the Soviet ban on Sigmund Freud’s writings. Now that Russians can freely access what are possibly the most essential documents for understanding the twentieth century, they can record their own fresh discovery of these works, perhaps most pertinently Totem and Taboo, and apply it to Soviet history. This in fact is what Zagdansky has done. The unspoken irony throughout this highly imaginative film is the deficit of perspective and insight that the ban on Freud enforced on the Soviet Union".
Dennis Grunes. WorldPress.com