Gently Down the Stream (1981)

Filmmaker Su Friedrich creates a very innovative and visually appealing dream journal constituted by text and emotion with this short film. She correlates text with accompanying images of water, saints, and women which share an indirect but powerful connection. Gently Down the Stream is able to form a personal attachment with the viewer because the text allows the viewer to hear the words as they would say them rather than the foreign voice of a narrator. This film's use of rythym and flow of the text creates the allusion of sound in the subconcious of the spectator; it becomes apparent that Friedrich's piece stood as a precursor and influence to Michael Snow's film So Is This.