Chocolate, monsters and mothers – surreal glimpses of our most common dreams
While your dreams might feel strange or random, and unique to you (if you even remember them at all), an ongoing project by the US psychologist Kelly Bulkeley offers some insight into our most common dream experiences. Since 2009, Bulkeley has encouraged people around the world to submit the contents of their dreams to his searchable online Sleep and Dream Database, which has thus far collected accounts of some 30,000 dreams. This appropriately surreal short video imagines a composite dream as it divulges some of the fascinating insights from the database, including the food you’re most likely to encounter while sleeping (chocolate), and the person you’re most likely to come across (mother, of course).
Video by Kolja Haaf
Website: BBC Reel
videoDemography and migration
The volunteers who offer a last line of care for migrants at a contentious border
30 minutes
videoConsciousness and altered states
How an artist learned to ‘co-live’ with the distressing voice in her head
6 minutes
videoLove and friendship
What does it mean to say goodbye to a creature that doesn’t know you’re leaving?
13 minutes
videoLife stages
Grief, healing and laughter coexist at a unique retreat for widows and widowers
15 minutes
videoConsciousness and altered states
What do screens depicting serene natural scenes mean to those living in lock-up?
12 minutes
videoFamily life
A mother and child bond in an unusual prison visitation space in this poignant portrait
11 minutes
videoFilm and visual culture
Space and time expand, contract and combust in this propulsive animation
5 minutes
videoConsciousness and altered states
‘I want me back’ – after a head injury, Nick struggles with his altered reality
7 minutes
videoWar and peace
A frontline soldier’s moving account of the fabled ‘Christmas truce’ of 1914
12 minutes