This course analyzes modern and post modern film fiction and poetry that highlight dreams, fantasy and madness in the Israeli context. The Zionist meta-narrative tells of an active, conscious, and rational enterprise of Israeli nation-building. Yet, its subversive shadow-side lurks in literary and cinematic nightmares, surrealist wanderings and stories packed with dreams. This tension exists in the Hebrew Literature of the twentieth century and persists in contemporary films and writings that question the sanity of protagonist and artist alike. Although S.Y. Agnon, the uncontested master of Hebrew literature, denied ever reading Freud, his works suggest otherwise. His literary heirs, A. Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, the pillars of the Israeli canon, often speak in the symbolic language of the subconscious. Israeli film classics like The Summer of Avia, as well as newly released works like Sweet Mud, also confront similar issues. English and German works by Kafka, Woolf and Plath play a comparative role.