Muskegon Film Festival 2009

'Sleeping River' interweaves breathtaking landscapes, wounded characters and a psychological method of editing to create an indelible return home for Tim, who is an artist that can't seem to remember the details of a horrible accident from his childhood. Now working on a graphic novel based on this traumatic event, Tim is compelled to return to his hometown after a twenty year absence when he realizes that he can't seem to remember exactly the exact details of that fateful night. Re-immersed in the austerity and wide open spaces of Colorado's north eastern grasslands, Tim tracks down two old friends in the hope of clarifying the event for himself. However, He learns that the details he can't seem to remember have left scars on his friends that they can't seem to forget. 'Sleeping River' takes full advantage of Colorado's Pawnee National Grasslands with breathtaking expanses, collections of abandoned places, and wanderings through deep arroyo mazes cut through white sandstone. Related to Tim's partial amnesia, 'Sleeping River' is the first application of an editing method that uses certain mental disorders as a model for editing choices. There is an attempt to maintain a constant narrative thread while time, space, image and sound are freed from each other and the burden of maintaining continuity in the hope of creating a more poetic cinematic language.