Waking up in a dream

What does it mean to be fully awake to your life?Waking Up in a Dream is an experimental documentary filmed between 2023 - 2025 throughout Brooklyn, New York. It is a meditation on time, memory, spirituality, and the sacred everyday.Filmed in parks, living rooms, religious centers, storefronts, and sidewalks, the film presents the borough as a literal and spiritual dreamscape of real people reflecting on their lives with radical honesty and presence:      the barber who recalls cherished childhood memories in trinidad.
         the rastafarian who channels ancient rhythms of good and evil.
            the boy who wonders about karma and loneliness in the grass.
               the buddhist monk who examines the nature of thought itself.
                  the recovering addict who details his past as a fading dream.
                     the mother who reflects on the body she once dreamed of escaping.These are not case studies or issue-driven portraits. They are mirrors to our shared human condition, an unfolding conversation between souls. They are relationships and connections that have been cultivated over a decade of the filmmakers calling Brooklyn home. Each person speaks from where they are—in feeling, in thought, in spirit—and the result is a mosaic of philosophies, contradictions, doubts, and beliefs. What unites them is a shared search for meaning beyond survival. For some, spirituality is expressed through religion. For others, it lives in memory, family, discipline, ritual, creation, and the tension between control and surrender.Their stories are woven together by a coming-of-age story. Su, an 8-year-old girl, journeys across Brooklyn to scatter her grandmother’s ashes at the site of her earliest memory: the beach. She sojourns through crowds, gardens, cemeteries, familiar spaces from the documentary. Su becomes an observer and participant, offering a conduit for reflection and transformation. She changes Brooklyn as much as Brooklyn changes her.The voice of Su's grandmother, Eka, bridges the worlds of narrative and documentary, past and present, personal and collective. Her poetic guidance echoes the timeless wisdom of mysticism, reminding us that time is not a currency to be lost or gained—but something we live every moment.Waking Up in a Dream is not a story about people, but one told through them: as spiritual archive, as collective unconscious, as living memory.Now will you drift back to sleep,
or awaken Your heart
to what you were born to remember?

Waking up (for the first time)

waking up (for the first time) is an audiovisual experiment that reconsiders footage of a film-in-progress as a place-based, multiscreen installation. In dreamlike tableaus of everyday city life, Brooklyn-based artists explore practices of spirituality and reflect on meaning-making with reverence for the quotidian observations that make up our ordinary lives.presented by: jamil mcginnis & pat heywood
images: peter hou
music: DOEQUO
sound recording: ej markland
sound mixing: isaac matusRockaway Film Festival (August 2024)
festival directors: courtney muller & sam fleischner
technical director: jorge morilloFilmmaker Magazine
TimeOut
Indiewire

team

Jamil and Pat co-founded Seneca Village Pictures in Crown Heights, Brooklyn as a home to explore the relationship between life and cinema. Their work has screened at the Museum of Modern Art, Film at Lincoln Center, Walker Arts Center, Locarno Film Fest, BFI, Telluride, and Clermont-Ferrand—where their short film, Gramercy, won the 2021 festival’s Labo Competition Grand Prix.Their first feature-length project, an experimental documentary titled Waking Up in a Dream, has received support from the International Documentary Association, Rooftop Films Filmmakers Fund, Hamptons Film International Screenwriters Lab, Gotham’s Project Market.Jamil’s short, as time passes, premiered at 2022 Cannes’ Directors Fortnight, followed by screenings at New York Film Festival, MoMA PS1’s “Open House” with SHASHA Movies, and BAM Film’s February 2024 slate with Alfreda’s Cinema. Jamil co-founded a book publishing house with Max Friedman called KNOW Publishing, creating their first book in 2020. He grew up in various parts of Turkey, Germany, and the United States.Tough Love, Pat's latest experimental short exploring grief in the wake of his grandmother's death, made its world premiere in the 2024 IDFA Competition for Documentary Short. Originally hailing from Fall River, Massachusetts in the United States, he is an advocate of meditation, yoga, cycling, and enjoys studying Buddhism, consciousness, and trauma healing methodologies.

Peter Hou (b. Queens, NY) is a Taiwanese cinematographer best known for his poetic imagery and intimate, observational approach. His sensibilities have been greatly shaped by embracing nature’s ebbs and flows. Allowing space to respond and adapt to surrounding environments. His photography continues to explore the beauty of impermanence and the transient relationship between time and memory.

E.J. Markland is a sound engineer, mixer, recorder, and musician based in NYC, focusing on film, corporate, and commercial sound production. Projects featuring his work include those for A24, HISTORY Channel, Dior, Art21, Billboard, and various others.

Yoko Kohmoto (she/her) is an eldest child of immigrants, a Leo, and a producer-writer based in NYC. Her producing work has been showcased at Tribeca Film Festival, Vimeo Staff Pick, Frameline, American Black Film Festival, and CAAMFest, among others. Her priorities as a producer are to build community, ensure safety, and uplift marginalized voices. In 2024, she started an initiative to create spaces for women and nonbinary artists of color in the film industry. She holds an MFA in Creative Producing and currently works as a consultant for The Gotham Film & Media Institute.

Petrus is a South African filmmaker who co-founded Vanishing Elephant, driven by a desire to tell meaningful stories. His shorts have screened at Locarno, SXSW, New Directors New Films, and New York Film Festival, being distributed to spaces such as Mubi, Topic, and Canal + Poland. He has worked between South Africa, Tanzania and the USA - producing independent work as well as an episode for Netflix’s African Folktales Reimagined Anthology series. He has been part of productions selected for Sundance, IFFR, Oberhausen, and Durban and work supported by the SFFILM, the Atlas Workshops and the Red Sea Souk. He was selected to take part in the 4th edition of “DEENTAL at CANNES” in 2024.

Stephanie Cheng is a filmmaker, photographer and actor based between New York and Beijing. Having grown up in China before spending most of her formative years in the US, her hybrid upbringing has strongly influenced and holistically informed her creative outlook and ethos by always approaching stories from varied motivations and origins of inspiration. She co-founded Good Behavior, a production company that focuses on genre-bending narratives by BIPOC storytellers and artists, and her works have screened at Palm Springs International ShortFest, San Diego International Film Festival and others. Stephanie received her B.F.A. in Film and Television from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and completed her Master’s in Visual, Museum, and Material Anthropology at the University of Oxford.

An accomplished producer, Joshua Sobel has produced over a dozen feature films in various capacities. Most recently he Executive Produced Phil Tippett’s groundbreaking stop-motion masterpiece, MAD GOD which is being distributed by Shudder and NO NOS MOVERIAN (We Shall Not Be Moved) by Pierre St. Martin which won Best Feature and Audience Award at the 2024 Guanajuato International Film Festival. He served as Producer on Xander Robin’s feature debut, ARE WE NOT CATS, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2016 and Edgar Nito’s opera prima, HUACHICOLERO (The Gasoline Thieves) which won Best New Director at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival. He is currently in post-production on a number of projects including two Ron Morales’ films set to premiere later this fall.

Caleb Negassa has produced several award winning films both here in the United States and Abroad. With a string of accolades to his name including the recent triumphs of the award-winning films “At Little Wheelie 3D Ato” and “Blind Stitch”, Mr. Negassa has demonstrated his unwavering commitment to delivering exceptional cinematic experiences. Beyond his prowess in producing, Mr. Negassa has made significant contributions in development, crafting a diverse portfolio for local and international production. His remarkable talent has also extended into TV, where he has lent his expertise to renowned shows like Mindy Kaling’s ‘Sex Lives of College Girls’ and HBO MAX hit show, the “Flight Attendant”.

Awakenings

support

Waking Up in a Dream is an ongoing project currently in production.We are fiscally sponsored by the non-profit 501(c)(3) organization IDA (Independent Documentary Association).Tax deductible donations can be made here: IDA FISCAL SPONSORSHIPIf you would like to learn more or request materials, we're here.