INSTANT DREAMS (2019)

Starring Stefanie Schneider, Stephen Herchen, Chris Bonanos

Directed by Willem Baptist

Distributed by Synergetic. 91 minutes. Not Rated

An author, an artist, and a scientist. In Instant Dreams by Willem Baptist, these three have pursued questions about the past, present, and future of a medium that is considered by some to be outmoded but is now being reinvented for our digital world. When Edwin Land revealed his invention of instant photography in 1947, it was with a vision that it would change how people interacted with each other. He believed that through our desire to take photographs of others and to share these images with each other, we reveal our curiosity, our tenderness, and affection we have for humanity. With instant photography, we could become closer and kinder to each other.

Christopher Bonanos, an editor at New York Magazine as well as an author, also believes in the social nature of analog instant photography. It is as simple as taking a photo and talking while waiting for the photo to develop. Or to see everyone at a party gather around the photos to see how they turn out and then ask for their own. Or to give the photo as a gift, one that is unique and irreproducible since instant film does not have a negative or a digital copy.

Stefanie Schneider, an artist from Germany who takes many photos in the American desert, has made her life’s work in analog photos and keeps hundreds of them in safes in Berlin. On screen, she muses about where her life will go once all the film she has stocked up on expires and becomes unusable. She talks about how digital photography has led people to obsess over “moments” and considers how analog photos seem to have a sense of time and history (to Bonanos, it has dimensions compared to the flatness of a digital image).

We are also introduced to Stephen Herchen, a top scientist who works at the Impossible Project, searching for the right chemical formula that will resurrect instant film. It is his dream to bring it back. And in his laboratory he and others persist in trying new formulas and if they fail, trying again.

Instant Dreams does not offer specific historical details about the growth of Polaroid or how the Impossible Project is reviving the medium after Polaroid stopped producing instant film in 2008. But through its beautiful visuals, sweeping music, and all the stories of these three people who are captivated by instant film, Instant Dreams successfully conveys the love people have for the medium and why: the tactile sense of it, the smell and the action of pulling it from the camera and waiting for the picture to develop. The complex chemical reactions and side reactions that occur right in the film is like a living thing. It’s mysterious, a moment of frozen time. It is an especially hopeful feeling to see how people like these three are trying to keep it alive in their own way, whether it’s by reinventing the chemical formula of the film, recording its history, or ardently using it for their art.

It is the persistence of this passion that has revived instant film. Though she is not the main subject of the documentary, there are moments we follow a young woman around Tokyo. She takes selfies with her smartphone camera and represents very much the future of our relationship with photography and cameras. Towards the end of the documentary, she uses an Instant Lab Universal. Developed by the Impossible Project, now rebranded as Polaroid Originals, you can turn any picture on your phone into a Polaroid photo. Werner Herzog even voices an app that tells you how to use it. It is not exactly the future that Edwin Land envisioned for his technology- if anything, his prediction of the future was closer to smartphones and their cameras- but I imagine that it was with much joy, especially from Schneider, Bonanos, and Herchen, that instant film has returned in its own way and with it, a wonderful way to capture and reflect our lives.