The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society Dream films 1926-1972

Sometimes referred to as an urban myth the Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society was group of working people from the neighborhood. They could not afford to be professional analysts, but were none the less filled with the desire to participate in one of the great intellectual movements of the 20th century. Just as they believed that Socialism would free them from oppression, they thought that psychoanalysis would liberate their psyches not just from the tyranny of class but also from the cultural and sexual mores of the time. Each year they held a competition in which members re-enacted their dreams on film and analyzed them. Ten of the films will be screened at this presentation. They can be thought of as a record of the hopes fears and fantasies of a changing cross section of those that made up the fabric of Coney Island through the 20th century, from immigrant Jews and Italians to wealthy bohemians to young gay men exploring their sexuality in the 1960’s.

Zoe Beloff is an artist, filmmaker and rootless cosmopolitan based in New York. She conceives of herself as a conduit between past and present, real and imagined, to help us picture a more egalitarian future. Her projects often involve a range of media including films, drawings and archival documents organized around a theme.

They include proposals for new forms of community, projects that explore relationships between labor, technology and our inner lives. Zoe’s work has been featured in international exhibitions and screenings; include the Whitney Museum Biennale, MoMA, the National Gallery in Washington D.C., the Pompidou Center in Paris, International Film Festival Rotterdam and FID Marseille. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard, the Graham Foundation and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. However, she particularly enjoys working in alternative venues that are free and open to the community for events and conversations. She is a professor at Queens College CUNY.