Alex Matraxia | Dream Factory / 2023

hot bodies in white and green light

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alex Matraxia (screenwriter and director) Dream Factory / 2023 [7 minutes]

 

British director Alex Matraxia’s very short work Deam Factory, which I saw the other day in the 2024 New York NewFest describes itself as an experimental film, but actually except for a few jump cuts, some repeated narrative elements, a moment presented almost in stop-time photography, and a few frames of gender confusion, there is not truly anything radically disjunctive, and its “exploration” of the erotics of cinema-going seems to be boiled down to three locations in the rather dowdy movie house: a young teen, a would-be Marlboro man (since when is possible or even desirable to smoke in a movie theater?) and another young man who sits beside him in the theater arena itself, a cowboy and a tough who meet up at the theater bathroom, and a blonde in drag who enters the arena before also appearing on the screen for an instant, potentially linking the act of theater going and experience of cinema itself.

      The teens rub their hands against one another and eventually turn to kiss. The cowboy watches the other tough piss before they join each other in a toilet stall. And the blonde in drag fixes her hair, strolls down the green-lit hall, enters the theater proper and shines brightly for an instant in the white light of the cinema projector itself.

      Matraxia’s film at moments is moody and visually beautiful, stirring up some mild sense, as Brian Fanelli wrote in Overlook, of  “violent and erotic undertone[s].” But I certainly can’t agree with this critic’s conclusions:

 

“Dream Factory says a lot without its characters speaking. This is one experimental short that highlights the historical importance movie theaters played as cruising sites. There’s no straightforward narrative here. Instead, the visuals, including the constant shot of film reels, do the talking.”

 

      For me, this short tries far too hard to do far too little. If one really wants to explore the erotics of gay theater, I’d suggest a trip back to early porn films such as Jack Deveau’s 1978 A Night at the Adonis or even Filipino director Mark V. Reyes 2005 short, Last Full Show.  

 

Los Angeles, October 17, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2024).