God's Nightmares

Lore & Background

God's Nightmares was created by Daniel Cockburn, who began work on it in 2017, the same year he completed his York University master's thesis film, The Argument (with annotations). Both films are considered Canadian-British co-productions, and Cockburn undertook an artist-in-residency and research fellowship at Queen Mary University of London's School of Languages, Linguistics and Film during its pilot year. The film had a budget of $300,000, and its financing was noted by critic Calum Marsh as part of a broader shift in Canadian film funding away from large-budget epics toward supporting diverse projects.

The film relies almost exclusively on a few dozen carefully curated film clips, the same collage technique Cockburn used in the first half of The Argument and in his early short film work. The synopsis describes dozens of disjointed images flowing one after the other, representing the mind of God reviewing human activities and anxiously considering the nightmare possibility of becoming trapped in his own creation as an everyman. The film explores the murky world of dream logic and the stuff of dreams and nightmares through a meditative collage of iconic and esoteric movie clips set to measured but troubled reflections of God.

God's Nightmares had its world premiere at the 44th Toronto International Film Festival on 8 September 2019 in the Short Cuts Programme, and its U.S. premiere at Fantastic Fest on 22 September 2019. Critical response included Norman Wilner placing it at the top of his list of best ten short films at the festival, calling it a video essay. Calum Marsh included it on his list of top six short films at the festival, describing Cockburn as one of Canada's preeminent film essayists. Victor Stiff compared the film to the unsettling films of David Lynch, noting that clips such as Halloween and After Hours induce anxiety through the strange visual collage.

Reader's Guide

God's Nightmares is significant as an experimental short film that uses found footage to create a meditative collage exploring themes of dream logic and the nature of cinema itself. The film is notable for its technique of mashing together appropriated film clips to imagine God's interior monologue, a method that critic Calum Marsh argues is also a way to think about how movies work. In this sense, God's Nightmares may be seen as a follow-up to Cockburn's 2017 film, The Argument (with annotations). The film's budget of $300,000 and its funding through Telefilm Canada and other bodies reflect a shift in Canadian film financing toward supporting diverse projects rather than large-budget epics. Critical reception placed the film among the top short films at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, with reviewers praising Cockburn's rich familiarity with cinema history and his ability to draw surprising connections and make observations that qualify as bona fide film criticism. The film's legacy lies in its contribution to the video essay form and its exploration of how movies work through the lens of a divine nightmare.

Did You Know?

• God's Nightmares had a budget of $300,000.
• The film had its world premiere at the 44th Toronto International Film Festival on 8 September 2019.
• The film uses a collage technique of a few dozen carefully curated film clips, the same method used in the first half of Cockburn's 2017 film The Argument (with annotations).
• Critic Victor Stiff compared God's Nightmares to the unsettling films of David Lynch.