Filmmaker Statement

Amy Hardie

I'm a mum with three kids, overstretched, loving it. The kids are integrated into this story — it's wound through taking them to school, checking heads for lice, cuddles in bed and tantrums in the kitchen. The animals and the landscape also play a big part. I live up in the Scottish mountains, with huge views and no neighbors. We get lots of stars.

I was very shocked by my dreams. I make science films for a living and I don't normally remember my dreams, unlike my psychoanalyst husband. He writes his dreams every morning, and says, comfortingly, that they are not to be taken literally. Except that my dream of my horse's death was literally true. And this was followed by two more dreams, warning me that I would die this year, and then showing me how I would die.

I began filming my children after my lungs collapsed. I wanted to get the whole year on record. I didn't tell my two girls, because I didn't want them scared. Nevertheless, my youngest daughter came home and read my palm, announcing cheerily that my life line was short and that I would 'have a happy life, but a short one.'

I met with neuroscientist Mark Solms, who has come to pre-eminence for his original scientific research into the sleeping brain states. He took me through what happens in the dreaming brain, and what he thought could be happening to me.

I realized, with only a month to go, I was really in danger — and that I had to get back inside my dream in order to change the dream.

Amy Hardie, Director/Cinematographer