Instant Dreams

Instant Dreams makes a strong case for the necessity of instant photography. Its three main subjects are compelling and well spoken. The film’s powerful, hypnotic images, and the mesmerizing score only add to the dream-like atmosphere being conveyed.

Instant Dreams is still an argument for the magical in a world that is “losing magic.”

While the film offers an appealingly nostalgic trance-out, it’s often short on detail, especially in terms of Stephen Herchen’s struggle to create the instant film technology, which director Willem Baptist reduces to exchanges of jargon in atmospheric laboratories.

As long as he maintains his focus on the notoriously private Land and the painstaking efforts of Impossible Project’s chief technology officer and Polaroid vet Stephen Herchen to recapture lightning in an SX-70, Baptist delivers something reasonably compelling. Unfortunately the bulk of the overly artsy production is preoccupied with the exploits of others.

Any viewers actually interested in the topic would be well advised to search elsewhere for information.

Baptist’s approach, treating his subjects like characters in a drama, is ultimately frustrating.