Marti Domination in the Life of Dreams
Marti Domination in the Life of Dreams, the seventh in a series of films by the Syndicate of Human Image Traffickers investigating various aporia of the creative life, premiered as an Official Selection of the Brownfish Film Festival at Cinema Village on November 3rd, 2012 and was nominated for Best Documentary. It was next screened along with Jo Boobs Teaches the Va-Va-Voom as part of a benefit for Occupy Sandy at The Delancey on November 13, 2012. Our film was then shown on May 24, 2013 as part of a Syndicate-only program at the Norwood Club’s Sound & Vision series. Then it was screened as an Official Selection of the Beacon Independent Film Festival on September 18, 2013. The next viewing was as part of the original Secrets of the Deep (with Bradley Eros, Leslie Hodgkins, Alice Cohen, Joel Schlemowitz) at the Sunview Luncheonette on Friday, June 13, 2014. On April 29, 2016, the film screened at the Howl! Happening in NYC as part of a three-part film residency for Jeffrey Wengrofsky. London’s Framestore Preview Theater hosted a private screening of the films of Jeffrey Wengrofsky in August of 2017. On January 25, 2018, the historic Gene Frankel Theatre (24 Bond Street, NYC) hosted the new program of Secrets of the Deep: Dreams on Film, which includes Marti Domination in the Life of Dreams. As part of Secrets of the Deep, Marti Domination in the Life of Dreams has now also screened at the Reverb in Baltimore, won the Award for Best Experimental Film Program at the Berkeley Video and Film Festival on November 4, 2018, was on display at Film Noir Cinema in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, on Saturday, December 8, 2018, and in London’s Dublin Castle on December 6, 2023,
Is watching a movie like dreaming?
Marti Domination in the Life of Dreams is a surreal documentary film that compares the cinematic experience to dreaming. It was shot largely in the three-room tenement apartment of performance artist Marti Domination. When asked about the art she enjoys, Marti shares her interest in Surrealism and old Hollywood glamour. The film follows her comparing the cinematic experience to dreaming until she enters a dream within the film and bids the viewer a loving farewell.
Marti Domination is best known to cinephiles for her role as “Goodyear” in Matthew Barney’s epic art film, Cremaster I. In the subterranean art world of New York’s Lower East Side Marti has long been admired for her work with The Blacklips Performance Cult at the Pyramid Club; for fetish performances as part of the House of Domination (with Debbie Harry, Chi-Chi Valenti, etc); for her performances in some of the films of the Cinema of Transgression (like Dirty by Tessa Hughes Freeland); and as the vocalist of Beaut, a musical combo with her longtime partner, Mister Twinkle (formerly of Stiffs, Inc.).
Soundtrack for this film was provided by Beaut, recorded by Antony Hegarty, and adapted for the film by David Kavanaugh, Daniel Schanler, and Jeffrey Wengrofsky. Marti Domination in the Life of Dreams was written and directed by Jeffrey Wengrofsky, photographed by Brian Wengrofsky and David Kavanaugh, and edited by David Kavanaugh, Daniel Schanler, and Jeffrey Wengrofsky.