We spent the weekend at my house upstate in Woodstock, NY, with a creative team of make-up artist, painter and a prop stylist, and shot a series of strange, surreal episodes. We didn't have a script, rather just tools and visual exercises that we wanted to try out. Allegria Torassa, the co-director, and I had both recently seen the Claude Cahun exhibit at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, and were super inspired by Cahun's bizarre images of identity and costume. Using metallic paints and strobe lighting, we tried to make surreal images and then, later during the editing process, created a vague narrative. I later also shot some images on Monhegan Island, Maine, with my sister Alice Goldsmith as a collaborator.

We wandered around the island and found odd things like the enormous mushroom and that would then spark an idea. The music and paint definitely creates a 1970s psychedelic vibe. As with 'L'ILE', my other film that I premiered on Dazed Digital, I wanted to obscure the identity of the actors but rather than use white masks, we utilized paint and objects to disguise the faces of the participants. Since it feels a bit like a dark dream sequence, we titled it "Hatsuyume" which is Japanese for 'the first dream in the New Year'. Traditionally, the contents of the dream would foretell the luck of the dreamer in the ensuing year...

Directors Columbine Goldsmith and Allegria Torassa
Creative Alice Goldsmith and Jessica Barensfeld
Props Courtney Cain Saunders
Paint artist Masha Gvozdov