''In the Realms of the Unreal'' is a 2004 American

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

written and directed by

Jessica Yu Jessica Lingmin Yu (born February 14, 1966) is an American film director, writer, producer, and editor. She has directed documentary films, dramatic films, and television shows. Yu won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject in ...

about American

outsider art Outsider art is art made by self-taught or supposedly naïve artists with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrate ...

ist

Henry Darger Henry Joseph Darger Jr. (; April 12, 1892 – April 13, 1973) was an American writer, novelist and artist who worked as a hospital custodian in Chicago, Illinois. He has become famous for his posthumously discovered 15,145-page fantasy novel m ...

(1892–1973).

Summary

An obscure janitor during his life, Darger is known for the posthumous discovery of his elaborate 15,145-page fantasy manuscript entitled '' The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion'', along with several hundred watercolor paintings,

collages Collage (, from the french: coller, "to glue" or "to stick together";) is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an Assemblage (art), assemblage of different forms, thus creat ...

and other drawings illustrating the story.

Content

The film's style is atypical of a documentary. Because there are only three known photographs of Darger, and because of his reclusive lifestyle, the film is mostly a narrated biographical account, accompanied by animated versions of events from his ''

magnum opus A masterpiece, ''magnum opus'' (), or ''chef-d’œuvre'' (; ; ) in modern use is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, ...

'', which is also surveyed in detail. Interviews with his few neighbors and other acquaintances are included. The film's use of a child actor as its narrator is also unconventional as Dakota Fanning was only seven years old when she narrated the film.

Reception

The film has a 70% rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

and a score of 74 on

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

Accolades

The film won the

National Film Board The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; french: Office national du film du Canada (ONF)) is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary fi ...

Award for Best Documentary at the 2004

Vancouver International Film Festival The Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) is an annual film festival held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, for two weeks in late September and early October. The festival is operated by the Greater Vancouver International Film Fest ...

while it was also nominated for Best Documentary Screenplay from the

Writers Guild of America The Writers Guild of America is the joint efforts of two different US labor unions representing TV and film writers: * The Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), headquartered in New York City and affiliated with the AFL–CIO * The Writers Gu ...

and a Gotham Award for Best Documentary.Gotham Awards laud best indie features - Variety
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References

External links

PBS.org The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

*
Official website
{{Jessica Yu 2004 films 2004 animated films 2004 documentary films 2000s American films 2000s English-language films American films with live action and animation American animated documentary films Collage film Documentary films about painters Films directed by Jessica Yu Films scored by Jeff Beal POV (TV series) films Works about outsider art