Friday, May 12, 9:00 PM, Charles Theatre 3

Director: Alan Berliner

Cast: Alan Berliner, Dr. William C. Dement, Dr. Leonid Kayunov, Mark R. Rosekind Ph.D., Dr. Richard D. Simon Jr., Dr. Art Spielman

Country: USA
Year: 2005
Running Time: 90:00 minutes
Format: video

Using a filmmaking style that is at once outrageously personal, and singularly artistic, Alan Berliner digs deep into the human condition by focusing on apparently tiny concerns. He made a celebrated film about his father, and another one about his grandfather. We did a screening a few years back of a film Alan made about a dinner party he held for all the people he could gather that were named Alan Berliner. In their own indescribable way, each movie reveals something about the universe and our role in it.

This film is about Alan’s insomnia, a condition that afflicts one in three Americans. Those are the facts, and experts are consulted, but they are just the springboard for the movie. Stripping himself bare, Alan takes the audience inside his head. It’s dazzling, often very funny, probably not all of it intentionally, and full of insight. We get to see his obsessions, have long contentious conversations with his mom, his sister, and his wife, and watch him work (making this film!). It’s bravura filmmaking, and his central performance is as honest and lacking in vanity as anything you are likely to see, while of course being totally self-centered.

By traveling through this personal maze, you curiously learn a great deal about the phenomenon of insomnia, the variables that swirl around it, and the tumbled world one very talented artist inhabits.

--Jed Dietz

Presented By: Alan Berliner

Alan Berliner, was trained as an artist and experimental filmmaker at SUNY-Binghamton and the University of Oklahoma. Among many awards, he has won three Emmys and been nominated for others. He has won Rockefeller, Guggenheim, and Jerome Foundation Fellowships. He wrote, directed, produced, shot, and edited Wide Awake, which has screened at Sundance, SXSW, Berlin and numerous other film festivals this year.