ORANGE COUNTY PREVIEW : ‘CINEMA OF MIND’S EYE’ FILM SERIES

The visions, dreams and nightmares of renowned film makers such as Ingmar Bergman, Jean Cocteau, Fritz Lang, Werner Herzog and others will be explored over the next 10 weeks in the UCI Film Society’s winter series entitled “Dream Screen: a Cinema of the Mind’s Eye.”

Screenings will begin today with “Destiny,” the 1921 film by Fritz Lang, best known for his 1926 futuristic fantasy “Metropolis” and his 1931 melodrama with Peter Lorre entitled “M.” “Destiny,” a silent film, is about a 19th-Century woman who tries to persuade Death to spare her lover.

“This series is designed to expose people to a different type of cinema that is usually neglected,” said series co-organizer Ross Goo.

Unlike most films, in which the camera acts as an objective and omniscient third-party observer, in these works the directors used the camera as an active participant, said Tim Potter, who assembled the program.

“The concept is called ‘mind scream’ and that is what links all these films together. The series shows how that idea has evolved,” he said.

The films selected for the series include examples of expressionism and surrealism and span more than half a century, from Lang’s “Destiny” in 1921 to German director Werner Herzog’s 1978 remake of the vampire legend “Nosferatu.” “A lot of horror films involve mind scream,” Potter said.

They also include fantasies of a less frightening nature, such as Cocteau’s poignant 1946 film version of “Beauty and the Beast,” to be shown Feb. 7, which Potter described as “a classic fantasy. That is the film from the ‘40s that best falls into that category.”

The series continues on Friday nights through March 14, with all screenings at 7:30 p.m in UCI’s Social Science Hall.