SLEEP FURIOUSLY
United Kingdom 2007 – Director: Gideon Koppel – Original language: English, Welsh – Subtitles: English – Length: 94 min.
The small rural community of Trefeurig is set only 50 miles north of Dylan Thomas’ fictional village of Llareggub from "Under Milk Wood". Sleep Furiously is like a contemporary translation of Thomas’ poetic masterpiece. Gideon Koppel grew up in this farming parish in mid-Wales, where his Jewish parents – both refugees from Nazi-Germany – found a new home. His film, which has been influenced by his conversations with Peter Handke, documents a landscape that is subject to profound and rapid change, a community slowly disappearing and a whole village that is gradually dying out. Koppel’s lyrical and abstract, yet very personal approach uses the most beautiful of images to portray a sometimes harsh environment. Despite substantial transformations, exemplified by the shutting down of the local school or the advent of digital information technologies, old traditions and values remain. The special relationship between the community and the landscape is noticeable in the sense of rhythm and the pace of life that permeates every image, the editing and the soundscape created by Aphex Twin.
"This film is pure cinema: visually alert, brilliantly musical, and moving in the way it captures time passing and lives lost." Mark Cousins
"Sleep Furiously is the least anthropocentric film I have ever seen." Alex Cox
English/Original Title: Sleep Furiously. Camera: Gideon Koppel. Sound: Chris King, Joakim Sundström. Editing: Mario Battistel. Music: Aphex Twin. Production: Bard Entertainments, Van Film. Producer: Margaret Matheson, Gideon Koppel. Co-Producers: Mike Figgis, Serge Lalou.
