During the month of April, the University of New Mexico Southwest Film Center will publicly screen the nightmarish scenes you see in your mind every time you close your eyes.
The screenings will be accompanied by a Q&A session with the director — an unnamed white man with a salt-and-pepper beard, an ill-fitting blazer and bright orange suede shoes.
Starting with a classic, the SWFC is currently airing that nightmare you had as a child where all of your teeth fell out. It started with just one tooth in the morning, standing in front of the mirror getting ready for school. You were almost proud; you could see a quarter in your future. But then they kept dropping. One fell to the floor when you twisted the door handle. Another in the car. More, on the playground. One on the timed multiplication test you knew you were failing.
Soon you’re standing there, barely tall enough to see yourself in the mirror as it all happens too fast. Tooth, tooth, tooth. Drip, drip, drip.
Following the tooth dream is the dream where you are falling incredibly fast from a high height. You plummet to the ground, falling onto the asphalt of the street where you learned to ride a bike. You start walking, though you do not know what you are walking toward. It’s dark. Some animal lunges at you, and you brace yourself. With strength you didn’t know you had, you throw it off of you, but it keeps coming back. Soon, even in the dream, you are too tired to fight. The thing you have been running from all your life catches up to you. It might be a bear; it might be your first crush.
The festival will conclude with a double-feature: the dream where you’re naked in class and the dream you don’t tell anyone about, which leaves you unsettled, even though you aren’t sure it counts as a nightmare.
“What I wanted to do more than anything was capture the way the American dream has decayed into a nightmare for much of the young adult population,” the unnamed director said as his blazer grew tighter, constricting him like a python. “Imagine if you could capture the exact moment a rotten peach splattered against the ground; the exact second a good relationship went bad; the last kind thing your father ever said to you. You can capture that in a nightmare.”
He said there is a definite feeling of fear and despair hanging around you.
“Yes, you specifically,” he said, pointing at you. “It’s a really easy feeling to tap into. Everyone is just so frightened all of the time. Which is bad, I guess, but it’s good for me — a white guy who likes to make movies with a lot of Dutch angles and endings that make no sense.”
The director added that his main inspirations are Hitchcock, Lynch and that two-day old burrito you had right before going to bed.
Following the conclusion of the Nightmare Fest, the Southwest Film Center will air a screening of “Wicked.”
Addison Fulton is the culture editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on X @dailylobo
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