Mario Banushi: Dream/Trauma

Mario Banushi, after an existential trilogy about life and death, begins an investigation into folk traditions about love and dreams.

“When I was young, I remember how important dreams were and how decisive the signs they revealed about one's life were believed to be.”

During a road trip around the Balkans, he investigates a universe that contains the urban myths, the legends, and the color symbolism of each region; traditions and rituals associated with dreams and how the hidden meanings and the omens they represent are interpreted in each region; the fragmentation of dreams, fantasies, illusions, and hallucinations and their connection to the meanings given to them by the various traditional cultures, religion, or psychoanalysis.

How can a dream be translated and shared without its primal, raw content being corrupted and lost? How can one create a conscious dream universe through the medium of traditional lullabies, ecstatic dances, and various other worlds hidden in the villages of the Balkans?

“A journey that starts at the place where I grew up, through the customs and traditions engraved in my unconscious and in my memory, and an attempt to immerse myself in this unique "continent" called the Balkans.”