Tscherkassky’s films are as much about light and darkness in their purest physical forms as they are about any of the action one sees on screen. Rather, it’s light and darkness that interferes and intrudes into the lives of the characters on screen.
Tscherkassky looked to find a new direction for the Surrealist film tradition, by returning to Freud’s theories of The Interpretation of Dreams and the aesthetic principles laid down by André Breton in his original manifesto. Specifically, Dream Work (the final CinemaScope film) adheres to Breton’s conceived exploration of “Psychic automatism in its pure state”, investigating “the actual functioning of thought”.
Dream Work’s footage was copied by hand, frame by frame, on to unexposed film stock. It opens with a woman falling asleep.