When I think about my film, what interested me was exploring what I call “EDGE STATES”: boundaries and transitions between different states of mind and times in life. I wanted to explore the transition from adolescence to adulthood and the boundaries between sanity and madness. It seemed to me that in both cases the lines are blurred, not black and white, yet society puts people in categories: teenagers, mentally ill, artists, gay, working class, etc. This kind of grouping creates stigma, fear, and stereotyping.

I was also interested in issues of “PERSONAL AUTONOMY.” Very often, teens and those labeled “mentally ill” are deprived of personal autonomy. Either because they are too "young" or too "irrational" they are told what to do, what not to do, and often coerced through force or
psychological pressure. When a parent makes a decision for a younger person, or a doctor administers drugs to someone against their will, it involves coercion, benevolent in intent as it may be. In both cases it can be traumatic, because it deprives someone of their “personhood”. So I tried to tell a story about two people in "edge states”, who experience coercion in different ways, and who, despite great differences in age and status, form a friendship based on compassion and acceptance.
-Nora Jacobson

Director’s Bio

NOTHING LIKE DREAMING is Jacobson’s second narrative feature film. Her first, MY MOTHER'S EARLY LOVERS, was also shot in her native Vermont, and played at the Austin Film Festival (Finalist), Film Fest New Haven (Jury Award), Maine International Film Festival (Audience Award) and the Ajijic (Mexico) Film Festival (Best Independent Film).

Her feature-length documentary, DELIVERED VACANT, the product of her eight-year study of gentrification in Hoboken, New Jersey, premiered at the New York Film Festival and played at Sundance and the San Francisco Film Festival (Golden Gate Award).

Jacobson studied experimental film with Stan Brakhage at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and anthropology at Dartmouth College. She is the recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Media Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

OFF THE GRID PRODUCTIONS