Bells of Atlantis (1952)
Director:
Ian Hugo
Stars:
Anaïs Nin
Anais Nin is best known for her diaries depicting her psychological and artistic growth, published House of Incest in 1958. This dream-journey features Nin reading an extract from her novella House of Incest, in particularly the line "I remember my first birth in water," Bells of Atlantis evokes the watery depths of the lost continent of ourselves, and the images suggest the aqueous beauty of that lost world. It is a lyrical journey into another time, an imaginative film exploration of a poet's world. Her episodic text recites a narrative of the agonizing birth of consciousness from the indistinct fluid realms of Atlantis, the film's metaphor for the subconscious. The visual track of the camera sways gently in contrasting directions over each of the three layers of superimposed images that are usually present.