Siesta / Rapid Eye Movements

Part of Spirits in the Sky: A Weekend with Mary Lambert. 

August 4—Director Mary Lambert, actors Jodie Foster and Ellen Barkin, editor Glenn Morgan. Moderated by film writer and Switchblade Sisters podcast host April Wolfe.

Mary Lambert’s moody, animated dreamscape was made during her time as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design in collaboration with Jeff Carpenter. Short-listed for an Academy Award, Rapid Eye Movements plunges viewers into an obscured world of night life, eavesdropped phone calls, and philosophical romantic musings. (1977, dir. Jeff Carpenter and Mary Lambert, 16mm, color, 12 min.)

Proclaimed “this year’s Blue Velvet” by American Film, it’s not difficult to ascertain why Siesta was a controversial, if not critically lauded, feature debut. Shot on location in Spain, with a score performed by the late Miles Davis, this tale of obsessive love is wholly distinct among its arthouse contemporaries. Performances from Ellen Barkin and Jodie Foster proclaim the film’s bohemian, outsider spirit from the jump, sweeping us along for a whirlwind ride through the abstract logic of an unmissable fever dream. (1987, dir. Mary Lambert, 35mm, color, 97 min.)