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THE INSOMNIAC CYCLES Written produced and directed by Ran Slavin 70" min. A man is waking up in a parking lot, shot in the shoulder, he can?t recall how he ended up there, where did the gun he carried with him disappear and whether he is a victim of a crime, or alternatively, a killer. ?The insomniac city cycles?, fluctuates at that point on the axis of reality versus fiction, reality versus imagination and creates an affinity between the protagonist?s mental space and the urbanite one. The colossal and frantic urban topography which envelops the protagonist exhibits a limbo which fables to a mental state where the character is ?stuck? between wakefulness and sleep up to the point where all borders become blurred and reality itself resembles a dream, or better said, a nightmare, in which one can no longer distinguish between truth and lie. He continuously asks himself, ?Is it real??, ?Am I dreaming??, ?Where am I?? Slavin succeeded in creating a spectacular cinematic process in which opposites simultaneously occur as an action of self negation (for example, through the intelligent and rational use of instant replay) and by doing so constructs a space-time devoid reality, both imaginary and real at the same time, which enables us to examine all occurrences, including dreams and memories, as having an equal ontological status. The 2nd part of the film starts when a woman waking up in a hotel room in Shanghai to the sound of a ringing phone. Her legs are weakly tied and she is lying alone in bed. On the line there is a guy who, according to the woman, ?resembles the shot man from the dream?. That is to say, was it a dream after all? The plot keeps branching out and the photogenic solitude asks for her own death. She paid in advance and she is entitled to it. A serial killer enters the frame. The city?s denseness clears off itself to re-repeated images of helpless caged animals which exhibits the woman?s hallucinatory mental space, which in itself, is the mind, the consciousness. The first encounter with a narrative based screenplay (after more than 30min into the film) initially creates a factious sense of a firm grasping point, of orientation, though Slavin creates a screenplay without determination. By that, it enables the viewer to continuously ask himself ? Is it real? A dream? Or is it a memory? The fact that the tale of the protagonist is actually the woman?s own dream (which her own story might be a dream, a hallucination or a nightmare deprived of concrete time and space) discerns the veracity question of ?what?s real? as irrelevant and thus expands the discussion to the rational recognition and the perception of time as an a-priory conscious idea. In order to understand the artistic process in ?The insomniac city cycles? one must remember that this film is actually the 4th version of this film project, created as a direct continuation to the 3rd version named ?Insomniac City? (which is the first part of this film with slight changes). The fact that the film is so much different from one version to the other, changing the narrative using the same images in a different cut, and thus expand and deepen the discussion over it, while using documentary photography to create a hallucinatory alternative reality. (Liora Belford) Cast: Lee Trifon, Adi Gilad, Yaniv Abraham, Irad Mazliah, Ran Slavin Crew Dialogues co-written with Monika Bielskyte Voice of man in pet shop: Ohad Naharin Line Producer; Lior Ianai Lighting; Nimrod Golan Dressing; Maayan Goldman Makeup; Dorit Cohen Camera; Ran Slavin Underwater camera; Alain Daniel Editor; offline, online and post production; Ran Slavin Music and soundtrack design; Ran Slavin Sound mix; Itzik Cohen Sound editors; Ran Slavin, Itzik Cohen, Omri levy

Ran Slavin, who is in charge of writing the screenplay, directing, editing, sound design and original music of ?The insomniac city cycles?, is one of the most prominent new video-sound artists to emerge from Israel with continuous international screenings and exhibitions. His work is cross media and includes photography, cinema, video and sound installations, digital and acoustic music and lives video/sound improvisations. He is active in both the contemporary international music and art scenes. His audio work is a culmination of digitally processed acoustic sources which he turns into generative yet evasive atmospheres. It exists somewhere between the audible and the visual, at times, combined into real time performances.