In Broken Dreams, filmmaker Annette Mangaard chronicles depression, a relentless descent into the innermost self. Shot on super 8 and 16mm with a handwind bolex camera, the film layers fractured half-remembered events from her childhood into a barrage of images and symbols-the hard façade of city towers, the stark white tip of a canoe gliding into oblivion, the dry whispering of prairie grass, the grainy distortion of an angry dog. The archetypes of Mangaard's pain paint a breathtaking portrait of sadness and turmoil, a state of mind out of which she begins to emerge through the power of dreams. In her words, "Only those who have been there know how deep the recesses of the mind can be, how dark the world can become."
