GR425 Waking Illusions Festival Catalog by meaganfloris

A SURREALIST FILM FESTIVAL

WAKING

WAKING A SURREALIST FILM FESTIVAL

dedicated to THE LOCKED STORIES OF OUR SUBCONSIOUS

WAKING ILLUSIONS

AGE OF GOLD

L’Age d’Or

PRODUCTION DIRECTOR SCREENPLAY PRODUCER PHOTOGRAPHY MUSIC

CAST THE WOMAN THE MAN BANDIT CHIEF GOVERNOR SPIRIT

LUIS BUÑUEL LUIS BUÑUEL & SALVADOR DALÍ CHARLES VICOMTE DE NOAILLES ALBERT DUVERGER VAN PARYS

LYA LYS GASTON MODOT MAX ERNST JOSEP LLORENS ARTIGAS VALENTINE PENROSE

DETAILS SALVADOR DALÍ

release date location run time format LANGUAGE

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NOVEMBER 1930 PARIS 60 MINUTES 35MM B&W FRENCH

THE FILMS

the lack of a

PLOT SUMMARY

“ SURREALISM IS DESTRUCTIVE BUT IT ONLY DESTROYS WHAT IT CONSIDERS TO BE SHACKLES LIMITING OUR VISION.”

The first scene of the film is a documentary about scorpions. After that, the film is a series of vignettes, wherein a couple’s attempts at consummating their romantic relationship are continually thwarted by the bourgeois values and sexual mores of family, church, and society.

The couple are first seen creating a disturbance by making love in the mud during a religious ceremony. The man is apprehended and led away by two men who struggle to control their captive’s sudden impulses. He momentarily breaks free long enough to kick a small dog. Later he struggles free to aggressively crush a beetle with his shoe. As he is escorted through city streets, he sees an advertisement that inspires him to fantasize a woman’s hand rubbing herself, and becomes transfixed by another advertisement showing a woman’s legs in silk stockings. He eventually escapes his handlers, inexplicably assaults a blind man standing at a curb, and gets into a taxi.

Meanwhile, the woman is at home, where she tells her mother she hurt her finger, which is wrapped in a bandage that disappears and reappears from scene to scene. The woman and her parents attend a party where the guests seem oblivious to alarming or incongruous events in their midst: a maid screams and falls to the floor after emerging from a doorway where flames are visible; a horse-drawn cart filled with rowdy men drinking from large bottles passes through the elegant company in the ballroom; the father converses with guests while ignoring several flies on his face; a small boy is shot and killed for a minor prank.

The man arrives at the party and sees his lover from across the room. He behaves brusquely toward the other guests while looking ardently in the woman’s direction, and she looks longingly at him. The woman’s mother hands the man a drink, but spills a drop on his hand. He becomes enraged and slaps her, which seems to excite the daughter. Seeking sexual release and satisfaction, the couple go into the garden and make love next to a marble statue, while the rest of the party guests assemble outdoors for an orchestral performance of Liebestod. When the man is called away to answer a telephone call, the woman sublimates her sexual passion by fellating the toe of the statue until the man returns. The Liebestod music stops abruptly when the conductor, his hands gripping his head, walks away, and wanders into the garden where the couple are. The woman runs to comfort the elderly conductor before finally French kissing him. The man stands up, bumping his head on a hanging flower pot, and grasps his head in pain as he leaves the garden. He stumbles away to her bedroom where he throws a burning tree, a bishop, a plow, the bishop’s staff, a giraffe statue and handfuls of pillow feathers out the window.

comforts a young woman who has run out from the castle, before he takes her back inside. Afterwards, a woman’s scream is heard, and only the Duc re-emerges; and he is beardless. The concluding image is a Christian cross festooned with the scalps of women; to the accompaniment of jovial music, the scalps sway in the wind.

–salvador dalÍ

The final vignette is an allusion to the Marquis de Sade’s novel The 120 Days of Sodom; the intertitle reads: 120 Days of Depraved Acts, about an orgy in a castle, wherein the surviving orgiasts are ready to emerge to the light of mainstream society. From the castle door emerges the bearded and berobed Duc de Blangis (a character from de Sade’s novel) who greatly resembles Jesus, the Christ, who

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SURREALISM

THE ARTISTS

THE FILMS

THE FESTIVAL

WAKING ILLUSIONS

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SURREALISM PART 01

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WAKING ILLUSIONS

SURREALIST FILM A SUPER REALITY If “realism” is considered a true replication of reality, then surrealism is the expression of rejecting to rules of the reality. With that, freedom and creativity is abundant. In cinema, surrealism experiments with new techniques that revolutionized the film industry. Artists like Salvador Dali, Germaine Dulac, Luis Burn, and Man Ray wanted to explore and showcase the inner workings of the subconscious mind. Considering the absurdity of our dreams and subconscious, one can imagine the shocking and rather disturbing images that surrealist artists attempt to depict. The artists are eager to examine and explore the human mind, often depriving the viewer of an easy to follow narrative. The audience is taken on a journey with no destination. Traditional film and social constructs are done away with and can no longer be used as guides for the viewers. The work of Surrealist filmmakers were able to establish film as a independent and unique form of visual art as it did not fit the traditions of the film industry. Dreams are not simply retold in Surrealist films. Rather, the artists attempt to replicate the process of a subconscious dream but providing illogical, irrational, and unexpected disruptions. Characters in the films appears to be without a will and seems to forfeit control, reflecting the complete submission experienced in dreams. Mass entertainment is rebelled against and the traditional depiction of institutions such as religions, family, or marriage are attacked.

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FEATURED FILMMAKERS

LUIS BUÑUEL

SALVADOR DALÍ

GERMAINE DULAC

MAN RAY

SURREALISM

KEY IDEAS 01

Surrealist films created a revolution in cinema by dispensing with linear narratives and plots, thereby freeing cinema from a reliance on traditional story-telling borrowed from literature. Surrealism creates the possibility of cinema itself as an independent and unique visual art form.

Surrealist films do not merely retell dreams or stories but replicate their very processes through illogical, irrational disruptions and disturbing imagery, uncensored by normal wakeful consciousness or morality. Surrealist filmmakers found new techniques to convey the atmosphere and incongruous states of dreams. Like dreams, many Surrealist films resist interpretation. As in actual dreams, characters in Surrealist films display a lack of will, even a certain impotence. There is a forfeiting of control and a complete submission to the dream state.

Surrealist films often use shocking imagery that jolts the viewer, imagery that had not been seen in films prior to 1928. This challenges the notion of cinema as mere entertainment; the viewer can no longer be passive or complaisant. Surrealist film attempts to change cinema so that audiences experience more than the standard visuals.

Surrealist films often assault traditional institutions in society, such as religion, family, or marriage, exemplified in Luis Buñuel’s attacks on the Catholic Church or David Lynch’s depiction of a married couple with a deformed child, thus changing a traditional mode of mass entertainment into one full of revolutionary potential at the social and political level.

Many surrealist films are driven by strong feelings of longing, love, and sexual desire, what the founder of Surrealism, André Breton called “insane love” amour fou. This love or desire, while appearing self-destructive or illogical to the rational world, leads characters in surrealist films—and viewers in real life—to realizations they may not have otherwise had.

Unlike Surrealist poetry, which ultimately could only create abstract linguistic metaphor, Surrealist film could show even the most incongruous or absurd images as visual, concrete facts. It could show the marvelous or uncanny as real—the material strangeness of reality. And though Surrealist paintings could depict dream-like scenes, they were still single, frozen illusions, while Surrealist cinema could show actual objects in motion, as they move in dreams, the paradoxical realism of Surrealism.

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WAKING ILLUSIONS

THE SURREALIST MANIFESTO by André Breton We are still living under the reign of logic, but the logical processes of our time apply only to the solution of problems of secondary interest. The absolute rationalism which remains in fashion allows for the consideration of only those facts narrowly relevant to our experience. Logical conclusions, on the other hand, escape us. Needless to say, boundaries have been assigned even to experience. It revolves in a cage from which release is becoming increasingly difficult. It too depends upon immediate utility and is guarded by common sense. In the guise of civilization, under the pretext of progress, we have suc- ceeded in dismissing from our minds anything that, rightly or wrongly, could be regarded as superstition or myth; and we have proscribed every way of seeking the truth which does not conform to convention. It would appear that it is by sheer chance that an aspect of intellectual life —and by far the most important in my opinion —about which no one was supposed to be concerned any longer has, recently, been brought back to light. Credit for this must go to Freud. On the evidence of his discoveries a current of opinion is at last developing which will enable the explorer of the human mind to extend his investigations, since he will be empowered to deal with more than merely summary realities. Perhaps the imagination is on the verge of recovering its rights. If the depths of our minds conceal strange forces capable of augmenting or conquering those on the surface, it is in our greatest interest to capture them; first to capture them and later to submit them, should the occasion arise, to the control of reason. The analysts themselves can only gain by this. But it is important to note that there is no method fixed a priori for the execution of this enterprise, that until the new order it can be considered the province of poets as

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well as scholars, and that its success does not depend upon the more or less capricious routes which will be followed. It was only fitting that Freud should appear with his critique on the dream. In fact, it is incredible that this important part of psychic activity has still attracted so little attention. (For, at least from man’s birth to his death, thought presents no solution of continuity; the sum of dreaming moments - even taking into consideration pure dream alone, that of sleep - is from the point of view of time no less than the sum of moments of reality, which we shall confine to waking moments.) I have always been astounded by the extreme disproportion in the importance and seriousness assigned to events of the waking moments and to those of sleep by the ordinary observer. Man, when he ceases to sleep, is above all at the mercy of his memory, and the memory normally delights in feebly retracing the circumstance of the dream for him, depriving it of all actual consequence and obliterating the only determinant from the point at which he thinks he abandoned this constant hope, this anxiety, a few hours earlier. He has the illusion of continuing something worthwhile. The dream finds itself relegated to a parenthesis, like the night. And in general it gives no more counsel than the night. This singular state of affairs seems to invite a few reflections: 1. Within the limits to which its performance is restricted (or what passes for performance), the dream, according to all outward appearances, is continuous and bears traces of organization. Only memory claims the right to edit it, to suppress transitions and present us with a series of dreams rather than the dream. Similarly, at no given instant do we have more than a distinct representation of realities whose co-ordination is a matter of will.It is important to note that nothing leads to a greater dissipation of the constitu-

ent elements of the dream. I regret discussing this according to a formula which in principle ex- cludes the dream. For how long, sleeping logicians, philosophers? I would like to sleep in order to enable myself to surrender to sleepers, as I surrender to those who read me with their eyes open, in order to stop the conscious rhythm of my thought from prevailing over this material. Perhaps my dream of last night was a continuation of the preceding night’s, and will be continued tonight with an admirable precision. It could be, as they say. And as it is in no way proven that, in such a case, the ‘reality’ with which I am concerned even exists in the dream state, or that it does not sink into the immemorial, then why should I not concede to the dream what I sometimes refuse to reality - that weight of selfassurance which by its own terms is not exposed to my denial? Why should I not expect more of the dream sign than I do of a daily increasing degree of consciousness? Could not the dreams as well be applied to the solution of life’s fundamental problems? Are these problems the same in one case as in the other, and do they already exist in the dream? Is the dream less oppressed by sanctions than the rest? I am growing old and, perhaps more than this reality to which I believe myself confined, it is the dream, and the detachment that I owe to it, which is ageing me. 2. I return to the waking state. I am obliged to retain it as a phenomenon of interference. Not only does the mind show a strange tendency to disorientation under these conditions (this is the clue to slips of the tongue and lapses of all kinds whose secret is just beginning to be surrendered to us), but when functioning normally the mind still seems to obey none other than those suggestions which rise from that deep night I am commending. Sound as it may be, its equilibrium is relative. The mind hardly dares

SURREALISM

may be, its equilibrium is relative. The mind hardly dares express itself and, when it does, is limited to stating that this idea or that woman has an effect on it. What effect it cannot say; thus it gives the measure of its subjectivism and nothing more. The idea, the woman, disturbs it, disposes it to less severity. Their role is to isolate one second of its disappearance and remove it to the sky in that glorious acceleration that it can be, that it is. Then, as a last resort, the mind invokes chance—a more obscure divinity than the others—to whom it attributes all its aberrations. Who says that the angle from which that idea is presented which affects the mind, as well as what the mind loves in that woman’s eye, is not precisely the same thing that attracts the mind to its dream and reunites it with data lost through its own error? And if things were otherwise, of what might the mind not be capable? I should like to present it with the key to that passage. 3. The mind of the dreaming man is fully satisfied with whatever happens to it. The agonizing question of possibility does not arise. Kill, plunder more quickly, love as much as you wish. And if you die, are you not sure of being roused from the dead? Let yourself be led. Events will not tolerate deferment. You have no name. Everything is inestimably easy. What power, I wonder, what power so much more generous than others confers this natural aspect upon the dream and makes me welcome unreservedly a throng of episodes whose strangeness would overwhelm me if they were happening as I write this? And yet I can believe it with my own eyes, my own ears. That great day has come, that beast has spoken. If man’s awakening is harsher, if he breaks the spell it is because he has been led to form a poor idea of expiation.

4. When the time comes when we can submit the dream to a methodical examination, when by methods yet to be determined we succeed in realizing the dream in its entirety (and that implies a memory discipline measurable in generations, but we can still begin by recording salient facts), when the dream’s curve is developed with an unequalled breadth and regularity, then we can hope that mysteries which are not really mysteries will give way to the great Mystery. I believe in the future resolution of these two states–outwardly so contradictory–which are dream and reality, into a sort of absolute reality, a surreality, so to speak, I am aiming for its conquest, certain that I myself shall not attain it, but too indifferent to my death not to calculate the joys of such possession. They say that not long ago, just before he went to sleep, Saint-Pol-Roux placed a placard on the door of his manor at Camaret which read: The Poet Works. There is still a great deal to say, but I did want to touch lightly, in passing, upon a subject which in itself would require a very long exposition with a different precision. I shall return to it. For the time being my intention has been to see that justice was done to that hatred of the marvellous which rages in certain men, that ridicule under which they would like to crush it. Let us resolve, therefore: the Marvellous is always beautiful, everything marvellous is beautiful. Nothing but the Marvellous is beautiful. One night, before falling asleep, I became aware of a most bizarre sentence, clearly articulated to the point where it was impossible to change a word of it, but still separate from the sound of any voice. It came to me bearing no trace of the events with which I was involved at that time, at least to my conscious knowledge. It seemed to me a highly insistent sentence - a sentence, I might say, which knocked at the window. I quickly took note of it and was

prepared to disregard it when something about its whole character held me back. The sentence truly astounded me. Unfortunately I still cannot remember the exact words to this day, but it was something like: ‘A man is cut in half by the window’; but it can only suffer from ambiguity, accompanied as it was by the feeble visual representation of a walking man cut in half by a window perpendicular to the axis of his body. It was probably a simple matter of a man leaning on the window and then straightening up. But the window followed the movements of the man, and I realized that I was dealing with a very rare type of image. Immediately I had the idea of incorporating it into my poetic material, but no sooner had I invested it with poetic form than it went on to give way to a scarcely intermittent succession of sentences which surprised me no less than the first and gave me the impression of such a free gift that the control which I had had over myself up to that point seemed illusory and I no longer thought of anything but how to put an end to the interminable quarrel which was taking place within me. Totally involved as I was at the time with Freud, and familiar with his methods of examination which I had had some occasion to practise on the sick during the war, I resolved to obtain from myself what one seeks to obtain from a patient–a spoken monologue uttered as rapidly as possible, over which the critical faculty of the subject has no control, unencumbered by any reticence, which is spoken thought as far as such a thing is possible. It seemed to me, and still does–the manner in which the sentence about the man cut in two came to me proves it–that the speed of thought is no greater than that of words, and that it does not necessarily defy language or the moving pen. It was with this in mind that Philippe Soupault (with whom I had shared these first conclusions) and I undertook to

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WAKING ILLUSIONS

cover some paper with writing, with a laudable contempt for what might result in terms of literature. The ease of realization did the rest. At the end of the first day we were able to read to each other around fifty pages obtained by this method, and began to compare our results. Altogether, those of Soupault and my own presented a remarkable similarity, even including the same faults in construction: in both cases there was the illusion of an extraordinary verve, a great deal of emotion, a considerable assortment of images of a quality such as we would never have been capable of achieving in ordinary writing, a very vivid graphic quality, and here and there an acutely comic passage. The only difference between our texts seemed to me essentially due to our respective natures (Soupault’s is less static than mine) and, if I may hazard a slight criticism, due to the fact that he had made the mistake of distributing a few words in the way of titles at the head of certain pages—no doubt in the spirit of mystification. On the other hand, I must give him credit for maintaining his steadfast opposition to the slightest alteration in the course of any passage which seemed to me rather badly put. He was completely right on this point, of course. In fact it is very difficult to appreciate the full value of the various elements when confronted by them. It can even be said to be impossible to appreciate them at the first reading. These elements are outwardly as strange to you who have written them as to anyone else, and you are naturally distrustful of them. Poetically speaking, they are especially endowed with a very high degree of immediate absurdity. The peculiarity of this absurdity, on closer examination, comes from their capitulation to everything—both inadmissible and legitimate—In the world, to produce a revelation of a certain number of premises and facts generally no less objective than any others.

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In homage to Guillaume Apollinaire—who died recently, and who appears to have consistently obeyed a similar impulse to ours without ever really sacrificing mediocre literary means—Soupault and I used the name surrealism to designate the new mode of pure expression which we had at our disposal and with which we were anxious to benefit our friends. Today I do not believe anything more need be said about this word. The meaning which we have given it has generally prevailed over Apollinaire’s meaning. With even more justification we could have used supernaturalism, employed by Gerard de Nerval in the dedication of Filles de Feu. In fact, Nerval appears to have possessed to an admirable extent the spirit to which we refer. Apollinaire, on the other hand, possessed only the letter of surrealism (which was still imperfect) and showed himself powerless to give it the theoretical insight that engages us. Here are two passages by Nerval which appear most significant in this regard: ‘I will explain to you, my dear Dumas, the phenomenon of which you spoke above. As you know, there are certain story-tellers who cannot invent without identifying themselves with the characters from their imagination. You know with what conviction our old friend Nodier told how he had had the misfortune to be guillotined at the time of the Revolution; one became so convinced that one wondered how he had managed to stick his head back on.’ ‘... And since you have had the imprudence to cite one of the sonnets composed in this state of supernaturalism reverie, as the Germans would say, you must hear all of them. You will find them at the end of the volume. They are hardly more obscure than Hegel’s metaphysics or Swedenborg’s memorables, and would lose their charm in explication, if such a thing were possible, so concede me at least the merit of their expression . . .’

It would be dishonest to dispute our right to employ the word surrealism in the very particular sense in which we intend it, for it is clear that before we came along this word amounted to nothing.

SURREALISM

Thus I shall define it once and for all

SURREALISM noun, masc., Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations. ENCYCL. Philos. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association heretofore neglected, in the omnipotence of the dream, and in the disinterested play of thought. It leads to the permanent destruction of all other psychic mechanisms and to its substitution for them in the solution of the principal problems of life.

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WAKING ILLUSIONS

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THE ARTISTS PART 02

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WAKING ILLUSIONS

FILMOGRAPHY 1933 1947 1949 1950 1951 1951 1952

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UN CHIEN ANDALOU L’AGE D’OR THE GREAT MADCAP LOS OLVIDADOS SUSANA DAUGHTER OF DECEIT MEXICAN BUS RIDE

1952 1953 1953 1954 1954 1954 1955

A WOMAN WITHOUT LOVE EL BRUTO ÉL ILLUSION TRAVELS BY STREETCAR WUTHERING HEIGHTS ROBINSON CRUSOE THE RIVER AND DEATH

1956 1956 1959 1959 1960 1961 1962

CELA S’APPELLE L’AURORE DEATH IN THE GARDEN NAZARÍN LA FIÈVRE MONTE À EL PAO THE YOUNG ONE VIRIDIANA THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL

1965 1967 1969 1970 1972 1974 1977

SIMON OF THE DESERT BELLE DE JOUR THE MILKY WAY TRISTANA THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE

THE ARTISTS

BIOGRAPHY The father of cinematic Surrealism and one of the most original directors in the history of the film medium, Luis Buñuel was given a strict Jesuit education (which sowed the seeds of his obsession with both religion and subversive behavior), and subsequently moved to Madrid to study at the university there, where his close friends included Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca. After moving to Paris, Buñuel did a variety of film-related odd jobs in Paris, including working as an assistant to director Jean Epstein. With financial assistance from his mother and creative assistance from Dalí, he made his first film, the 17-minute Un Chien Andalou (1929), in 1929, and immediately catapulted himself into film history thanks to its shocking imagery (much of which - like the sliced eyeball at the beginning - still packs a punch even today). It made a deep impression on the Surrealist Group, who welcomed Buñuel into their ranks. The following year, sponsored by wealthy art patrons, he made his first feature, the scabrous witty and violent L’Age d’Or (1930), which mercilessly attacked the church and the middle classes, themes that would preoccupy Buñuel for the rest of his career. That career, though, seemed almost over by the mid-1930s, as he found work increasingly hard to come by and after the Spanish Civil War he emigrated to the US where he worked for the Museum of Modern Art and as a film dubber for Warner Bros.

LUIS BUÑUEL But despite this new-found acclaim, Buñuel spent much of the next decade working on a variety of ultra-low-budget films, few of which made much impact outside Spanishspeaking countries (though many of them are well worth seeking out). But in 1961, General Franco, anxious to be seen to be supporting Spanish culture invited Buñuel back to his native country - and Bunuel promptly bit the hand that fed him by making Viridiana (1961), which was banned in Spain on the grounds of blasphemy, though it won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. This inaugurated Buñuel’s last great period when, in collaboration with producer Serge Silberman and writer Jean-Claude Carrière he made seven extraordinary late masterpieces, starting with Diary of a Chambermaid (1964). Although far glossier and more expensive, and often featuring major stars such as Jeanne Moreau and Catherine Deneuve, the films showed that even in old age Buñuel had lost none of his youthful vigour. After saying that every one of his films from Belle de Jour (1967) onwards would be his last, he finally kept his promise with That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), after which he wrote a memorable (if factually dubious) autobiography, in which he said he’d be happy to burn all the prints of all his films.

Moving to Mexico in the late 1940s, he teamed up with producer Óscar Dancigers and after a couple of unmemorable efforts shot back to international attention with the lacerating study of Mexican street urchins in Los Olvidados (1950), winning him the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival.

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WAKING ILLUSIONS

FILMOGRAPHY 1929 1930 1945 1946/2003

UN CHIEN ANDALOU L’AGE D’OR SPELLBOUND DESTINO

THE ARTISTS

BIOGRAPHY Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali I Domenech was born at 8:45 on the morning of May 11, 1904 in the small agricultural town of Figueres, Spain. Figueres is located in the foothills of the Pyrenees, only sixteen miles from the French border in the principality of Catalonia. The son of a prosperous notary, Dali spent his boyhood in Figueres and at the family’s summer home in the coastal fishing village of Cadaques where his parents built his first studio. As an adult, he made his home with his wife Gala in nearby Port Lligat. Many of his paintings reflect his love of this area of Spain. The young Dali attended the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. Early recognition of Dali’s talent came with his first one-man show in Barcelona in 1925. He became internationally known when three of his paintings, including The Basket of Bread, were shown in the third annual Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1928. The following year, Dali held his first one-man show in Paris. He also joined the surrealists, led by former Dadaist Andre Breton. That year, Dali met Gala Eluard when she visited him in Cadaques with her husband, poet Paul Eluard. She became Dali’s lover, muse, business manager, and chief inspiration. Dali soon became a l eader of the Surrealist Movement. His painting, The Persistance of Memory, with the soft or melting watches is still

SALVADOR DALÍ one of the best-known surrealist works. But as the war approached, the apolitical Dali clashed with the Surrealists and was “expelled” from the surrealist group during a “trial” in 1934. He did however, exhibit works in international surrealist exhibitions throughout the decade but by 1940, Dali was moving into a new type of painting with a preoccupation with science and religion. Dali and Gala escaped from Europe during World War II, spending 1940–48 in the United States. These were very important years for the artist. The Museum of Modern Art in New York gave Dali his first major retrospective exhibit in 1941. This was followed in 1942 by the publication of Dali’s autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali. As Dali moved away from Surrealism and into his classic period, he began his series of 19 large canvases, many concerning scientific, historical or religious themes. Among the best known of these works are The Hallucinogenic Toreador, and The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in the museum’s collection, and The Sacrament of the Last Supper in the collection of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Two years later, a pace-maker was implanted. Much of this part of his life was spent in seclusion, first in Pubol and later in his apartments at Torre Galatea, adjacent to the Teatro Museo. Salvador Dali died on January 23, 1989 in Figueres from heart failure with respiratory complications. As an artist, Salvador Dali was not limited to a particular style or media. The body of his work, from early impressionist paintings through his transitional surrealist works, and into his classical period, reveals a constantly growing and evolving artist. Dali worked in all media, leaving behind a wealth of oils, watercolors, drawings, graphics, and sculptures, films, photographs, performance pieces, jewels and objects of all descriptions. As important, he left for posterity the permission to explore all aspects of one’s own life and to give them artistic expression. Whether working from pure inspiration or on a commissioned illustration, Dali’s matchless insight and symbolic complexity are apparent. Above all, Dali was a superb draftsman. His excellence as a creative artist will always set a standard for the art of the twentieth century.

In 1974, Dali opened the Teatro Museo in Figueres, Spain. This was followed by retrospectives in Paris and London at the end of the decade. After the death of his wife, Gala in 1982, Dali’s health began to fail. It deteriorated further after he was burned in a fire in his home in Pubol in 1984.

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WAKING ILLUSIONS

FILMOGRAPHY 1915 1917 1917 1918 1918 1919 1919

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LES SOEURS ENNEMIES VENUS VICTRIX MYSTERIOUS GEORGE ÂMES DE FOUS FRANCE THE CIGARETTE LE BONHEUR DES AUTRES

1920 1920 1921 1922 1922 1923 1923

MALENCONTRE SPANISH FIESTA LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI LA MORT DU SOLEIL WERTHER THE SMILING MADAME BEUDET GOSSETTE

1956 1956 1959 1959 1960 1961 1962

CELA S’APPELLE L’AURORE DEATH IN THE GARDEN NAZARÍN LA FIÈVRE MONTE À EL PAO THE YOUNG ONE VIRIDIANA THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL

1965 1967 1969 1970 1972 1974 1977

SIMON OF THE DESERT BELLE DE JOUR THE MILKY WAY TRISTANA THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE

THE ARTISTS

BIOGRAPHY Director and French film critic, born in Amiens on November 17, 1882 and died in Paris on July 20, 1942. With a great humanist formation, Charlotte Elisabeth Germaine Saisse-Schneider became one of the key figures of the French avant-garde of the 1920s, mainly in the Impressionist school denomanida. Feminist activist since his youth, journalist of great rigor and critical, Germaine delved into the world of cinema at a time of great creative restlessness, though her early works from Soeurs enemies (1915) did not show anything special. It was from La Fête espagnole (1920) that her name began to play with great intensity in the French film field. Much of her work came from self-financing, given that the approaches and themes which chose were not attractive for producers of the time. It was a stage of theorizing, of analysis and reflection on the language and its creative application to the image in movement, in which it sought, along with other contemporaries, placed the film in an artistic highlight context while it built its own specificity. Their favorite cinematographic techniques were “flou” effect using and overprinting, which are patent in one of their more subjective qualifications: souriante Madame Beudet (1923). Her films were the object of constant experimentation and Dulac used them as an escape route for their own concerns. It doesn’t matter in both the content and the psychological portraits that embody. Germaine Dulac collaborated throughout the 1920s in several magazines like Cahiers du Cinéma and Cinegraphie. In one of her works–The Aesthetic. The locks. The integral cinegrafia–published in 1927, refers to the cinematographic Impressionism saying that “led to consider the nature and objects such as elements that were to the action.

GERMAINE DULAC “A shadow, a light, a flower at the beginning had a sense, insofar as reflections of a soul or a situation, and little by little were becoming a necessary complement, equipped with an intrinsic value...” to mark their doubts “that the cinegrafico art is a narrative art. In my opinion, the film goes further in sensitive suggestions that in their final details. It is possible that it is, as I have already said, the music of the eyes, and that the theme that serves as pretext should be treated similarly to the sensitive subject that inspired the musician...” They are principles underlying the Symphony Visuality of the work of Dulac. The Coquille et Le Clergyman (1928) turned out to be a surprising surrealist bet that went and rode Germaine screenplay by Antonin Artaud, and after its completion was the notable controversies between Director and screenwriter, positions and clashes that resulted in much literature in those years. Following this work, Dulac took refuge in works such as Themes et variations (1928) and études Cinématographique sur une arabesque (1929), which reflected her interest in the “pure cinema”, a line that went far beyond their initial proposals and her surrealist flirtation. In the 1930s she worked for Gaumont Studios, was dedicated to the documentary, working for Gaumont Studios. At the beginning of the Popular Front, she launched a passenger movement, “Mai 36”, whose bases appeared in the publication cinema Liberte.

PAGE 27

WAKING ILLUSIONS

FILMOGRAPHY 1924 1926 1926 1927 1928 1928 1929

PAGE 28

BALLET MÃ&#x2030;CANIQUE EMAK-BAKIA ANEMIC CINEMA THE STARFISH THE MYSTERIES OF THE CHATEAU OF DICE PARIS EXPRESS PARIS LA BELLE

THE ARTISTS

MAN RAY

BIOGRAPHY Man Ray was a pioneer in 20th century avant-garde art and photography and a leading figure in the Dada and Surrealist art movements in both America and in France, where he lived for many years. Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia in 1890, he grew up in New York, where he studied art at the National Academy of Design and the Ferrer School. Early in his career he worked as a commercial artist for a map publisher, but gave it up to practice his own art. Man Ray was introduced to the European avant-garde at the 1913 Armory Show, the first exhibition in the United States to feature modern art. This exhibition inspired him to reject traditional styles and to experiment with new forms and new methods of creating art. He met Alfred Stieglitz in 1913, and through Stieglitz’s Gallery 291, he became acquainted with many of the most innovative artists of the time, including the founder of the New York Dada movement, Marcel Duchamp. Man Ray and Duchamp remained close friends throughout their lives. Man Ray’s early work, such as The Phillips Collection’s The Black Tray (1914), shows cubist influences, particularly in the abstracted and simplified forms, flattened and arranged in layered planes within very shallow space. His interest in abstract surface design that results from overlapping shapes suggests collage, a technique in which Man Ray was also interested. In 1917 he abandoned painting and collage in favor of photography and opened his own portrait studio. During this time he began to gain a reputation within the New York avant-garde art community for his advanced intellect and defiance of artistic convention, and, with Duchamp, he founded Société Anonyme, an organization dedicated to promoting international avantgarde art and artists in the United States. Man Ray moved to Paris in 1921 to gain exposure to the newest European art movements, and while there he was an active and influential member of the Dada and Surrealist art movements.

In 1922, Man Ray invented a new method of creating a photograph, which he called ‘rayograph.’ Instead of producing photographs from a negative, Ray created photographic images by placing objects directly on photosensitive paper. During the1920s and 1930s, he was also a popular fashion photographer, featured in publications such as Harper’s Bazaar, Vu, and Vogue. At this time he also experimented with solarization, which is reverse imaging, creating a photographic image from a negative form. His photographic innovations influenced other avant-garde photographers, such as André Kertesz and Brassai, and apprentices Berenice Abbott and Lee Miller. During World War II, Man Ray relocated to Hollywood, California, where he continued to develop his art, focusing on painting, filmmaking, and constructing objects within the Dada and Surrealist canon. He returned to Paris in 1951 and remained there until his death in 1976. During the later years of his career, he continued to flourish as an artist, and his work was exhibited widely, for example, at the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris (1962), the Los Angeles County Museum (1966), and the Venice Photography Biennale, where he won the Gold Medal in 1961.

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WAKING ILLUSIONS

PAGE 30

PAGE 31

THE FILMSPART 03

WAKING ILLUSIONS

AGE OF GOLD

L’Age d’Or

PRODUCTION DIRECTOR SCREENPLAY PRODUCER PHOTOGRAPHY MUSIC

CAST THE WOMAN THE MAN BANDIT CHIEF GOVERNOR SPIRIT

LUIS BUÑUEL LUIS BUÑUEL & SALVADOR DALÍ CHARLES VICOMTE DE NOAILLES ALBERT DUVERGER VAN PARYS

LYA LYS GASTON MODOT MAX ERNST JOSEP LLORENS ARTIGAS VALENTINE PENROSE

DETAILS release date location run time format LANGUAGE

PAGE 34

NOVEMBER 1930 PARIS 60 MINUTES 35MM B&W FRENCH

THE FILMS

the lack of a

PLOT SUMMARY The first scene of the film is a documentary about scorpions. After that, the film is a series of vignettes, wherein a couple’s attempts at consummating their romantic relationship are continually thwarted by the bourgeois values and sexual mores of family, church, and society. The couple are first seen creating a disturbance by making love in the mud during a religious ceremony. The man is apprehended and led away by two men who struggle to control their captive’s sudden impulses. He momentarily breaks free long enough to kick a small dog. Later he struggles free to aggressively crush a beetle with his shoe. As he is escorted through city streets, he sees an advertisement that inspires him to fantasize a woman’s hand rubbing herself, and becomes transfixed by another advertisement showing a woman’s legs in silk stockings. He eventually escapes his handlers, inexplicably assaults a blind man standing at a curb, and gets into a taxi. Meanwhile, the woman is at home, where she tells her mother she hurt her finger, which is wrapped in a bandage that disappears and reappears from scene to scene. The woman and her parents attend a party where the guests seem oblivious to alarming or incongruous events in their midst: a maid screams and falls to the floor after emerging from a doorway where flames are visible; a horse-drawn cart filled with rowdy men drinking from large bottles passes through the elegant company in the ballroom; the father converses with guests while ignoring several flies on his face; a small boy is shot and killed for a minor prank. The man arrives at the party and sees his lover from across the room. He behaves brusquely toward the other guests while looking ardently in the woman’s direction, and she looks longingly at him. The woman’s mother hands the

man a drink, but spills a drop on his hand. He becomes enraged and slaps her, which seems to excite the daughter. Seeking sexual release and satisfaction, the couple go into the garden and make love next to a marble statue, while the rest of the party guests assemble outdoors for an orchestral performance of Liebestod. When the man is called away to answer a telephone call, the woman sublimates her sexual passion by fellating the toe of the statue until the man returns. The Liebestod music stops abruptly when the conductor, his hands gripping his head, walks away, and wanders into the garden where the couple are. The woman runs to comfort the elderly conductor before finally French kissing him. The man stands up, bumping his head on a hanging flower pot, and grasps his head in pain as he leaves the garden. He stumbles away to her bedroom where he throws a burning tree, a bishop, a plow, the bishop’s staff, a giraffe statue and handfuls of pillow feathers out the window. The final vignette is an allusion to the Marquis de Sade’s novel The 120 Days of Sodom; the intertitle reads: 120 Days of Depraved Acts, about an orgy in a castle, wherein the surviving orgiasts are ready to emerge to the light of mainstream society. From the castle door emerges the bearded and berobed Duc de Blangis (a character from de Sade’s novel) who greatly resembles Jesus, the Christ, who comforts a young woman who has run out from the castle, before he takes her back inside. Afterwards, a woman’s scream is heard, and only the Duc re-emerges; and he is beardless. The concluding image is a Christian cross festooned with the scalps of women; to the accompaniment of jovial music, the scalps sway in the wind.

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WAKING ILLUSIONS

“ I HAVE WAITED FOR A LONG TIME. WHAT JOY TO HAVE OUR CHILDREN MURDERED!” –THE WOMAN, LARS LYRS

PAGE 36

THE FILMS

SELECTED FILM STILLS

from age of gold

FIG 01

FIG 02

FIG 03

FIG 04

FIG 05

FIG 06

PRIESTS FROM AGE OF GOLD

GASTON MOdot playing the man

cross with the scalps of women

incongruous events at a party

the bourgeoisie of AGE OF GOLD

LYA LYS AS THE WOMAN

PAGE 37

WAKING ILLUSIONS

AN ANDALUSIAN DOG Un Chien Andalou

PRODUCTION DIRECTOR SCREENPLAY PRODUCER cinematography MUSIC

CAST YOUNG GIRL YOUNG MAN SEMINARIST MAN IN PROLOGUE THIRD YOUNG MAN

LUIS BUÑUEL LUIS BUÑUEL & SALVADOR DALÍ LUIS BUÑUEL ALBERT DUVERGER RICHARD WAGNER

SIMONE MAREUIL PIERRE BATCHEFF SALVADOR DALÍ LUIS BUÑUEL ROBERT HOMMET

DETAILS release date location run time format LANGUAGE

PAGE 38

JUNE 1929 PARIS 21 MINUTES 35MM B&W FRENCH

THE FILMS

the lack of a

PLOT SUMMARY

The film opens with a title card reading “Once upon a time”. A middle-aged man sharpens his razor at his balcony door and tests the razor on his thumb. He then opens the door, and idly fingers the razor while gazing at the moon, about to be engulfed by a thin cloud, from his balcony. There is a cut to a close-up of a young woman being held by the man. She calmly stares straight ahead as he brings the razor near her eye. Another cut occurs to the moon being overcome by the cloud, then a cut to a close up of a hand slitting the eye of an animal with the razor (which happens so quickly the viewer may believe it was the woman’s eye), and the vitreous humour spills out from it. The subsequent title card reads “eight years later”. A slim young man (Pierre Batcheff) bicycles down a calm urban street wearing what appears to be a nun’s habit and a striped box with a strap around his neck. A cut occurs to the young woman from the first scene, who has been reading in a sparsely furnished upstairs apartment. She hears the young man approaching on his bicycle and casts aside the book she was reading (revealing a reproduction of Vermeer’s The Lacemaker). She goes to the window and sees the young man lying on the curb, his bicycle on the ground. She emerges from the building and attempts to revive the young man. Later, the young woman assembles pieces of the young man’s clothing on a bed in the upstairs room, and concentrates upon the clothing. The young man appears near the door. The young man and the young woman stare at his hand, which has a hole in the palm from which ants emerge. A slow transition occurs focusing on the armpit hair of the young woman as she lies on the beach and a sea urchin at a sandy location. There is a cut to an androgynous young woman, with bobbed hair and dressed in rather masculine attire, in the street below the apartment. She pokes at a severed human hand with her cane while surrounded by a crowd held back by policemen. The crowd clears when the policeman places the hand in

the box previously carried by the young man and gives it to the young woman. The androgynous young woman contemplates something happily while standing in the middle of the now busy street clutching the box. She is then run over by a car and a few bystanders gather around her. The young man and the young woman watch these events unfold from the apartment window. The young man seems to take sadistic pleasure in the androgynous young woman’s danger and subsequent death, and as he gestures at the shocked young woman in the room with him, he leers at her and grasps her breasts. The young woman resists him at first, but then allows him to touch her as he imagines her nude from the front and the rear. The young woman pushes him away as he drifts off and she attempts to escape by running to the other side of the room. The young man corners her as she reaches for a racquet in self-defense, but he suddenly picks up two ropes and drags two grand pianos containing dead and rotting donkeys, stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments, two pumpkins, and two rather bewildered priests (played by Jaime Miravilles and Salvador Dalí) who are attached by the ropes. As he is unable to pursue, the young woman escapes the room. The young man chases after her, but she traps his hand, which is infested with ants, in the door. She finds the young man in the next room, dressed in his nun’s garb in the bed. The subsequent title card reads “around three in the morning”. The young man is roused from his rest by the sound of a door-buzzer ringing (represented visually by a Martini shaker being shaken by a set of arms through two holes in a wall). The young woman goes to answer the door and does not return. Another young man, whom we see only from behind, dressed in lighter clothing, arrives in the apartment, gesturing angrily at him. The second young man forces the first one to throw away his nun’s clothing and then makes him stand with his face to the wall. The subsequent title card reads “Sixteen years ago”.

We see the second young man’s face for the first time (and discover that he is also played by Pierre Batcheff) as he admires the art supplies and books on the table near the wall and forces the first young man to hold two of the books as he stares at the wall. The first young man eventually shoots the second young man when the books abruptly turn into revolvers. The second young man, now in a meadow, dies while swiping at the back of a nude female figure which suddenly disappears into thin air. A group of men come and carry his corpse away. The young woman returns to the apartment and sees a death’s-head moth. The first young man sneers at her as she retreats and wipes his mouth off his face with his hand. The young woman very nervously applies some lipstick in response. Subsequently, the first young man makes the young woman’s armpit hair attach itself to where his mouth would be on his face through gestures. The young woman looks at the first young man with disgust, and leaves the apartment sticking her tongue out at him. As she exits her apartment, the street is replaced by a coastal beach, where the young woman meets a third man with whom she walks arm in arm. He shows her the time on his watch and they walk near the rocks, where they find the remnants of the first young man’s nun’s clothing and the box. They seem to walk away clutching each other happily and make romantic gestures in a long tracking shot. However, the film abruptly cuts to the final shot with a title card reading “In Spring”, showing the couple buried in beach sand up to their elbows, motionless dead.

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WAKING ILLUSIONS

“ I LOVE DREAMS, EVEN WHEN THEY’RE NIGHTMARES.” –LUIS BUÑUEL

PAGE 40

THE FILMS

SELECTED FILM STILLS

from anfrom andalusion age of gold dog

FIG 07

FIG 08

FIG 09

FIG 10

FIG 11

FIG 12

SIMONE MAREUIL

PIERRE BATCHEFF

a deathâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s-head moth

an androgynous young woman POKES A SEVERED HAND

THE SEVERED HUMAN HAND

SIMONE MAREUIL AND THE ANT INFESTEST PALM

PAGE 41

WAKING ILLUSIONS

ANEMIC CINEMA Anémic Cinéma

PRODUCTION ARTIST COLLABORATOR COLLABORATOR

MARCEL DUCHAMP MAN RAY MARC ALLÉGRET

DETAILS release date location run time format LANGUAGE

PAGE 42

1926 PARIS 6 MINUTES 16MM B&W FRENCH

THE FILMS

the lack of a

PLOT SUMMARY Anemic Cinema is a different sort of Surrealist film from the 1920’s when compared to the work of the surrealists which later followed it. Instead of disturbing, dreamlike imagery which became the trademark of Luis Bunuel, or the creepy, uncomfortable world created by the Quay Brothers, the famous French artist Marcel Duchamp here goes more for the look of a moving painting rather than a film in the repetitive cycle this short follows. The effects of the moving discs called “Rotoreliefs” might question your use of drugs, and as a whole the film takes on the look of a flip-book. Duchamp’s film—not his only one as he apparently made several other versions of the Rotoreliefs after this--depicts many whirling spirals intercut with French text, apparently a series of puns that are incomprehensible if you don’t know French. While it creates a good effect for a bunch of cardboard discs, the speed of them really isn’t fast and doesn’t go for a hypnotic effect like you might expect, and the entire thing seems a little too long like some segments could have been removed; it drags after a bit. Also, the amount of movement itself depends: some spirals create better visual effects than others, and at one point one of the least-moving ones stops entirely. Interesting and eyecatching, but little else.

PAGE 43

WAKING ILLUSIONS

“ HAVE YOU EVER PUT THE PITH OF THE SWORD IN THE STOVE OF THE BELOVED?” –TRANSLATED FRENCH PUN

PAGE 44

THE FILMS

SELECTED FILM STILLS

from from aNEMIC age of CINEMA gold

FIG 13

FIG 14

FIG 15

FIG 16

FIG 17

FIG 18

OPENING TITLE

ROTORELIEF

FRENCH PUN

ROTORELIEF

PAGE 45

WAKING ILLUSIONS

THE MYSTERIES OF THE CHATEAU OF DICE

Les Mystères du Château de Dé

PRODUCTION DIRECTOR PRODUCER SCREENPLAY

CAST SELF SELF SELF SELF SELF

MAN RAY & JACQUES-ANDRÉ BOIFFARD LE VICOMTE DE NOAILLES MAN RAY & JACQUES-ANDRÉ BOIFFARD

MAN RAY GEORGES AURIC LE COMTE DE BEAUMONT JACQUES-ANDRÉ BOIFFARD MARIE-LAURE DE NOAILLES

DETAILS release date location run time format LANGUAGE

PAGE 46

1929 FRANCE 27 MINUTES 35MM B&W FRENCH

THE FILMS

the lack of a

PLOT SUMMARY To the Viscountess of Noailles. I dedicate these pictures which can never reveal the extent of her kindness and charm. How two travellers arrived in St. Bernard, what they saw in the ruins of an old castle on top of which a modern-time castle stands. The travellers: Man Ray, J.A. Boiffard. The film opens from a night scene to two masked individuals at a cafe. They decide their actions on the role of dice. A throw of dice will never abolish chance. The hands are that of mannequins, their faces devoid of detail. Before the throw, their destination appears on a hillside in the form of both modern and ancient castles.

After a while, we are introduced to four intruders who are in turn resigning their fate to that of the dice. Upon their throw, they depart for the indoor swimming pool at the villa and entertain the viewer with various diving and gymnastic movements, including a woman juggling underwater and exercising with medicine balls. Actors explore the villas confines, until they eventually retire, fading from the screen. More moving shots of the villas external until two more travellers arrive at the location, again playing for chance within the garden. They proceed to stay overnight, bringing the film to an abrupt end.

Are we going? We’re not going We’re going! And their journey begins. Departing from their cafe, they travel through the French countryside arriving at the town of Hyères and their destination to find the modern castle empty. Elements of the interior explore various spatial relationships and textures. The film shows sculptures by Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró, as well as exploring the unique Cubist garden at Villa Noailles.

PAGE 47

WAKING ILLUSIONS

“ IT HAS NEVER BEEN MY OBJECT TO RECORD MY DREAMS, JUST THE DETERMINATION TO REALIZE THEM.” –MAN RAY, DIRECTOR

PAGE 48

THE FILMS

SELECTED FILM STILLS

from the mysteries of thefrom chateau age of of gold dice

FIG 19

FIG 20

FIG 21

FIG 22

FIG 23

FIG 24

masked indivduals finding an empty modern castle

Cubist garden at Villa Noailles

two masked individuals at a cafe

AN INTRUDER ENTERTAINING THE VIEWER

A throw of dice will never abolish chance.

four intruders who are resigning their fate to the dice

PAGE 49

WAKING ILLUSIONS

THE SEASHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN

La Coquille et le clerg yman

PRODUCTION DIRECTOR WRITER

CAST THE CLERGYMAN THE WOMAN THE MALE GENERAL

GERMAINE DULAC ANTONIN ARTAUD

ALEX ALLIN GENICA ATHANASIOU LUCIEN BATAILLE

DETAILS release date location run time format LANGUAGE

PAGE 50

FEBRUARY 1928 PARIS 40 MINUTES 35MM B&W FRENCH

THE FILMS

THE CAUSE OF A RIOT Germaine Dulac’s La Coquille et le Clergyman was arguably the first surrealist film ever made. Admired today for its innovative camerawork and engagement with gender politics, it focuses on a priest who covets another man’s wife. But it is the story surrounding the film that, as much as its plot, allows it to take its place in the realm of the surreal. At its first screening, in 1928, before an audience of surrealist artists and bohemians at the legendary Studio des Ursulines, Dulac’s film caused a literal riot. Accounts differ as to what happened at the screening. According to some, violence broke out when Antonin Artaud, who wrote the screenplay, was ejected from the cinema for calling Dulac a cow. In other tellings it was writer André Breton who shouted the epithet. Some say that Artaud was not even present, while others still state that he and other surrealists had come to the screening for the specific purpose of attacking Dulac and her film. Regardless, although the other films playing in the same programme were all applauded warmly, as soon as La Coquille’s title card appeared on the screen, a group in the audience began hurling gendered insults at the film and its director. Others, defending the film, reacted aggressively, and chaos ensued. No matter who was there or what exactly happened, the film ignited a mass agitation that began with insults against a lesbian director. The film itself can be regarded as a feminist work, and although it is unclear how much of it was actually seen at the screening, its own gender politics would probably have been enough to incite a male hysteria all by themselves.

La Coquille stands in controversial relation to gender. Though in many ways the film is typical of Dulac’s style, a major difference is that her other films focus on women; here, it is the titular clergyman, played by Alex Allin, who is at the centre of the narrative. In contrast to the dignified, long-suffering women of Dulac’s other works, the clergyman is an obsessive, unlikeable figure, the easy target of mockery by the object of his desire. To the role, which was intended to be played by Artaud himself, which he left due to a scheduling conflict, Allin brings a meek physicality totally at odds with Artaud’s handsome and commanding presence. Artaud’s clergyman might have been intense and beautiful; Allin’s is the opposite. The woman the clergyman obsesses over, played by Génica Athanasiou, is – Sandy Flitterman-Lewis has argued – less an object of desire than a “force of desire”.[2] She resists consumption by the spectator, and Allin’s clergyman is too weak to compete with her. Whenever he attempts to capture her, the director intervenes to save her from his touch: he grabs at her neck, and the neck becomes a house; he puts her face into a bottle, but when the bottle breaks we find his face inside. With a surrealist disdain for the normal bounds of filmed reality, Dulac uses editing and superimposition to protect Athanasiou’s character. Contrast the depiction of Athanasiou’s body with, for instance, that of Simone Mareuil in Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou. When Un Chien Andalou premiered at the Studio des Ursulines, less than a year after La Coquille, it was so well received that its filmmakers – hoping to cause chaos – found the

event boring. Both films contain scenes that focus on the eroticised bodies of their women characters, but the execution of these scenes couldn’t be more different. In La Coquille, when Allin pulls Athanasiou’s top off to reveal her breasts, they are almost immediately blurred, then briefly revealed again, then covered with superimposed seashells. Allin rips off the seashells, but rather than a continuous close-up of Athanasiou’s body, we quickly cut to a shot of Allin, holding the shells and glowering in frustration. As the film goes on, all Allin’s attempts – and so ours as well – to consume the image of Athanasiou are frustrated. Shots of her body or her face give us no time to appreciate her image before it becomes distorted or cut away from. It is impossible to know for sure what happened at the screening of La Coquille et le Clergyman. The surrealists attending the screening could have all been virulent misogynists eager to attack any woman, they could have just been looking for an excuse to cause a scene, or it could have been something in between. Regardless, what remains is that the film created a spark for violence and a starting point for real-life action, which demonstrates the power of Dulac’s work, as a filmmaker and a woman, in disrupting male viewing habits. Through an exploration of feminist themes supported by experimental filmmaking techniques, Dulac put the issue of gender at the forefront of her film, narratively, formally, and through her own role as director. Her work demonstrated the potential of Artaud’s later theories on cruelty, in a manner tied intrinsically to the gender politics of her film.

PAGE 51

WAKING ILLUSIONS

“ IT’S A FILM OF PURE IMAGES. IT DOES NOT I HAVEBUT WAITED FOR A ALONG TIME. TELL A “STORY DEVELOPS SERIES OF WHAT TO HAVE OUR CHILDREN MENTAL JOY STATES, WHICH ARE DEDUCEDMURDERED!” FROM – THE WOMAN, LARS LYRS EACH OTHER AS THOUGHT IS FROM THOUGHT.” –ANTONIN ARTAUD, WRITER

PAGE 52

THE FILMS

SELECTED FILM STILLS

THE SEASHELL AND from THEage CLERGYMAN of gold

FIG 25

FIG 26

FIG 27

FIG 28

FIG 29

FIG 30

ALEX ALLIN AS THE CLERGYMAN

LUCIEN BATAILLE AS THE GENERAL

VISIONS OF THE CLERGYMAN

THE OBSESSIVENESS OF THE CLERGYMAN

GENICA ATHANASIOU AS THE WOMAN

PAGE 53

WAKING ILLUSIONS

THE STARFISH

L’Étoile de mer

PRODUCTION DIRECTOR WRITER PRODUCER CINEMATOGRAPHY

CAST THE WOMAN THE MAN A MAN

MAN RAY & JACQUES-ANDRÉ BOIFFARD ROBERT DESNOS MAN RAY MAN RAY

KIKI OF MONTPARNASSE ANDRÉ DE LA RIVIÈRE ROBERT DESNOS

DETAILS release date location run time format LANGUAGE

PAGE 54

1928 PARIS 17 MINUTES 35MM B&W FRENCH

THE FILMS

the lack of a

PLOT SUMMARY Almost all of the scenes in this film are shot either off a mirror like the final shot, or through what appears to be diffused and textured glass. After opening to the couple walking along a road, the scene cuts to a caption.

The film then changes focus, following newspapers being blown in the wind while a man attempts to pick them up. Scenes from a railway journey appear briefly, tugboats docking at a wharfside followed by a panning city scape.

Les dents des femmes sont des objets si charmants... (Women’s teeth are such charming things...)

Si les fleurs étaient en verre (If the flowers were made of glass)

A short scene where the female alters her stocking. ... qu’ on ne devrait les voir qu’ en rêve ou à l’instant de l’amour. (... that one ought to see them only in a dream or in the instant of love.) From this point the couple retire to the upper bedroom of a house and the female undresses and retires, at which point the male bids her farewell. Si belle! Cybèle? (So beautiful! Cybèle?) The male leaves the house. Nous sommes à jamais perdus dans le désert de l’éternèbre. (We are forever lost in the desert of eternal darkness.) The film cuts to a female selling newspapers in the street, this is André de la Rivière in drag. Qu’elle est belle (How beautiful she is) A man is shown purchasing a starfish in a jar, returning it home to examine further.

Followed by a montage of various rotating objects, including the starfish in a jar. A few still lifes appear, again featuring the starfish.

The film then reveals a short end to the characters love triangle. Qu’elle était belle (How beautiful she was) Qu’elle est belle (How beautiful she is) The female appears in a mirror with the word ‘belle’, which shatters. The affair is over, and the film brings to a close.

Belle, belle comme une fleur de verre (Beautiful, beautiful like a glass flower) Belle comme une fleur de chair (Beautiful like a flower of flesh) Il faut battre les morts quand ils sont froids. (One must strike the dead while they are cold. Strike while the iron is hot) We rejoin the man as he ascends the staircase to the upper bedroom in the house, leaving the starfish at the foot of the stairs. The film cuts to the woman brandishing a large knife superimposed with the starfish. Les murs de la Santé (The walls of the Santé) Et si tu trouves sur cette terre une femme à l’amour sincère... (And if you find on this earth a woman whose love is true...) Belle comme une fleur de feu (Beautiful like a flower of fire) Le soleil, un pied à l’étrier, niche un rossignol dans un voile de crêpe. (The sun, one foot in the stirrup, nestles a nightingale in a mourning veil.) We return to the female reclining in the bedroom. Vous ne rêvez pas (You are not dreaming)

“Après tout” (“After all”)

PAGE 55

WAKING ILLUSIONS

“ IT IS WE, AND THE FACULTY OF INTERPRETATION PECULIAR TO THE HUMAN MIND, THAT SEE ART.” –MAN RAY, DIRECTOR

PAGE 56

THE FILMS

SELECTED FILM STILLS

from from the age starfish of gold

FIG 31

FIG 32

FIG 33

FIG 34

FIG 36

FIG 37

STILL LIFES FEATURING THE STARFISH

brandishing a large knife superimposed with the starfish

THE FILM WAS SHOT THROUGH diffused and textured glass

A FEMALE SELLING NEWSPAPER

BELLE SHATTERS, THE AFFAIR IS OVER

A man purchasing a starfish in a jar

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WAKING ILLUSIONS

MAN RAY’S MANUSCRIPT

for the Starfish

“ I HAVE WAITED FOR A LONG TIME. WHAT JOY TO HAVE OUR CHILDREN MURDERED!” – THE WOMAN, LARS LYRS

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THE FILMS

TRANSLATION A man and a woman in the street. Walk. Their legs. The woman’s legs. She stops. It’s in the street. She adjusts her garter. You can see her leg.

A ship.

They go up a dark staircase. It’s evening.

The woman in a Phrygian bonnet, smoke, fire, a deserted street see woman and wood fire; window through the fire.

A table. A wine bottle. A half-filled glass. A partly peeled banana. The starfish.

The same flower pot. The woman kneeling before a wood fire. The woman asleep in her bed. Begin with black.

Her bedroom. She gets undressed. He doesn’t. She lies down. goodbye. The man leaves. The door closes. In the street. A woman selling newspapers. It’s “she”.

The woman almost nude. One foot on a book. The starfish in a corner. The woman almost nude. Broken bottles around her from which red wine oozes. The starfish in a corner.

The street. The woman and the man arrive from two directions and meet. A second man arrives. The woman leaves with him.

The young man follows the woman selling newspapers who entices him into a dark place. She gives him a starfish in a jar. The man’s room. He looks at the starfish by the light of a lamp.

A road. The woman all by herself. The starfish superimposed.

The young man before the starfish. The starfish superimposed.

The young man looks at his hands. The starfish in a corner. The man’s hands. The lines of his hands outlined in black.

In the street, newspapers blown around by the wind. He catches one. You can read “Mr. ***”

A lit staircase. The woman goes up the stairs holding a long knife. The starfish on a step.

A pot containing a flower. The young man. In front of him, a masked woman. A series of glass containers, glass spheres and glass objects of all shapes and sizes fade to white. The man kneeling down before the woman with his head on her knee.

She removes her mask. It is “she”. The walls of La Sante. Night. The starry sky

A passing train the North star (with square drawing) The Seine ... flowing

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WAKING ILLUSIONS

AGE OF GOLD

L’Age d’Or

PRODUCTION DIRECTOR SCREENPLAY PRODUCER PHOTOGRAPHY MUSIC

CAST THE WOMAN THE MAN BANDIT CHIEF GOVERNOR SPIRIT

LUIS BUÑUEL LUIS BUÑUEL & SALVADOR DALÍ CHARLES VICOMTE DE NOAILLES ALBERT DUVERGER VAN PARYS

LYA LYS GASTON MODOT MAX ERNST JOSEP LLORENS ARTIGAS VALENTINE PENROSE

DETAILS ANDRÉ BRETON

release date location run time format LANGUAGE

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NOVEMBER 1930 PARIS 60 MINUTES 35MM B&W FRENCH

THE FILMS

the lack of a

“ THE MIND OF THE DREAMING MAN IS FULLY SATISFIED WITH WHATEVER HAPPENS TO IT. THE AGONIZING QUESTION OF POSSIBILITY DOES NOT ARISE.”

PLOT SUMMARY

–andrÉ breton

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THE FESTIVAL PART 04

WAKING ILLUSIONS

WAKING Delve into the blurred boundaries of the subconscious and the celebrations of irrationality in the films of surrealist artists.

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waking illusions

A SURREALIST FILM FESTIVAL 45 years after the first legal American showing of one of the more socially shocking Surrealist films, L’age d’Or, this festival celebrates the height of early Surrealist films from 1926-1930.

“ I BELIEVE IN THE FUTURE RESOLUTION OF THESE TWO STATES, DREAM AND REALITY, WHICH ARE SEEMINGLY SO CONTRADICTORY, INTO A KIND OF ABSOLUTE REALITY, A SURREALITY, IF ONE MAY SO SPEAK. ”

The festival highlights the objective surrealist artists had to unlock the visions of the subconscious. It is hosted at the historic Museum of Modern Art in New York from November 1–15, 2024.

–ANDRÉ BRETON

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WAKING ILLUSIONS

THE HISTORY OF THE MoMA In the late 1920s, three progressive and influential patrons of the arts, Miss Lillie P. Bliss, Mrs. Cornelius J. Sullivan, and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., perceived a need to challenge the conservative policies of traditional museums and to establish an institution devoted exclusively to modern art. They, along with additional original trustees, created The Museum of Modern Art in 1929. Its founding director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., intended the Museum to be dedicated to helping people understand and enjoy the visual arts of our time, and that it might provide New York with “the greatest museum of modern art in the world.” The public’s response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic, and over the course of the next 10 years the Museum moved three times into progressively larger temporary quarters, and in 1939 finally opened the doors of the building it still occupies in midtown Manhattan. Upon his appointment as the first director, Barr submitted an innovative plan for the conception and organization of the Museum that would result in a multi-departmental structure based on varied forms of visual expression. Today, these departments include architecture and design, drawings and prints, film, media and performance, painting and sculpture, and photography. Subsequent expansions took place during the 1950s and 1960s, planned by the architect Philip Johnson, who also designed The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden. In 1984, a major renovation designed by Cesar Pelli doubled the Museum’s gallery space and enhanced visitor facilities. The rich and varied collection of The Museum of Modern Art constitutes one of the most comprehensive and panoramic views into modern art. From an initial gift of eight prints and one drawing, The Museum of Modern Art’s collection has grown to approximately 200,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, media and performance art works, architectural models and drawings, design objects, and films. MoMA also owns approximately two million film stills. The Museum’s PAGE 68

Library and Archives contain the leading concentration of research material on modern art in the world, and each of the curatorial departments maintains a study center available to students, scholars, and researchers. The Museum maintains an active schedule of modern and contemporary art exhibitions addressing a wide range of subject matter, mediums, and time periods, highlighting significant recent developments in the visual arts and new interpretations of major artists and art historical movements. Works of art from its collection are displayed in rotating installations so that the public may regularly expect to find new works on display. Ongoing programs of classic and contemporary films range from retrospectives and historical surveys to introductions of the work of independent and experimental film- and video makers. Visitors also enjoy access to bookstores offering an assortment of publications, and a design store offering objects related to modern and contemporary art and design. The Museum is dedicated to its role as an educational institution and provides a complete program of activities intended to assist both the general public and special segments of the community in approaching and understanding the world of modern and contemporary art. In addition to gallery talks, lectures, and symposia, the Museum offers special activities for parents, teachers, families, students, preschoolers, bilingual visitors, and people with special needs. In addition, the Museum has one of the most active publishing programs of any art museum and has published more than 2,500 editions appearing in 35 languages. In January 2000, the Museum and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1) exercised a Memorandum of Understanding formalizing their affiliation. The final arrangement results in an affiliation in which the Museum becomes the sole corporate member of MoMA PS1 and MoMA PS1 maintains its artistic and corporate

independence. This innovative partnership expands outreach for both institutions, and offers a broad range of collaborative opportunities in collections, exhibitions, educational programs, and administration. In 2006, MoMA completed the largest and most ambitious building project in its history to that point. The project nearly doubled the space for MoMA’s exhibitions and programs. Designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, the facility features 630,000 square feet of new and redesigned space. The Peggy and David Rockefeller Building, on the western portion of the site, houses the main exhibition galleries, and The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building—the Museum’s first building devoted solely to these activities—on the eastern portion of the site, provides over five times more space for classrooms, auditoriums, teacher training workshops, and the Museum’s expanded Library and Archives. These two buildings frame the enlarged Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. To make way for that renovation and rebuilding project, MoMA closed on 53 Street in Manhattan on May 21, 2002, and opened MoMA QNS in Long Island City, Queens, on June 29, 2002. MoMA QNS served as the base of the Museum’s exhibition program and operations through September 27, 2004, when the facility was closed in preparation for The Museum of Modern Art’s reopening in Manhattan. This building now provides state-of-the-art storage spaces for the Museum. Today, The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 welcome millions of visitors every year. A still larger public is served by MoMA’s national and international programs of circulating exhibitions, loan programs, circulating film and video library, publications, Library and Archives holdings, websites, educational activities, special events, and retail sales.

waking illusions

LOCATION

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

FIG 01

WAKING ILLUSIONS EXHIBIT ENTRANCE

FIG 01

WAKING ILLUSIONS EXHIBIT

FIG 01

WAKING ILLUSIONS EXHIBIT

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WAKING ILLUSIONS

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS VIEWINGS 6:30PM 7:30PM 7:45PM 9:00PM 9:30PM 10:00PM

SPEAKERS ART HISTORIAN LEAD CURATOR ARTIST

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AGE OF GOLD THE SEASHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN ANEMIC CINEMA AN ANDALUSIAN DOG THE MYSTERIES OF THE CHÂTEAU DE DÉ THE STARFISH

DAN THOMPSON TIFFANY MORENO KATHERINE MATSUYA

waking illusions

GUEST SPEAKERS

DAN THOMPSON

KATHERINE MATSUYA

TIFFANY MORENO

Dan Thompson earned his BFA in art history at the Savannah College of Art & Design before working in New York at ARTnews. He earned his Masters at NYU with a thesis titled Surrealism Between The Wars. Thompson has been freelancing as an art authenticator in various top museums and art institutions around the nation.

Katherine Matsuya has been a working artists specialising in film and multi media installations since 2009. Her work has been exhibited at top establishments including the MoMA, the Art Insitute of Chicaco, LACMA, and the Whitney.

With 30 years of experience working at top art insitutitions around the globe, Tiffany Moreno joined the MoMA as a lead curator for 20th century art and film. She spearheaded the vision and production for Waking Illusions. Originally from Madrid, Moreno holds a BA in art history and German and a MFA in film history.

art historian

artist

LEAD CURATOR

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WAKING ILLUSIONS

ANDRÃ&#x2030; BRETON

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waking illusions

“ THE IMAGINARY IS WHAT TENDS TO BECOME REAL.”

–andrÉ breton

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WAKING ILLUSIONS

CREDITS This is a student project only, produced for a class assignment at the Academy of Art University, located in San Francisco, California. No part of this book or any other part of the project was produced for commerical use. Any association with ARTISTS AND establishments, such as the MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, are purely fictitious and hypothetical.

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WRITTEN CONTENT

IMAGES

The written content is a compilation of data taken from the following sources:

The images were sourced from the following:

anothergaze.com imdb.com moma.org salvadordali.com theartstory.org thebiography.us

artnet.com britannica.com unsplash.com theartstory.org imdb.com rottentomatoes.com sensesofcinema.com filmreference.com

“ I BELIEVE IN THE FUTURE RESOLUTION OF THESE TWO STATES, DREAM AND REALITY, WHICH ARE SEEMINGLY SO CONTRADICTORY, INTO A KIND OF ABSOLUTE REALITY, A SURREALITY, IF ONE MAY SO SPEAK.”

–ANDRÉ BRETON

If “realism” is considered a true replication of reality, then surrealism is the expression of rejecting to rules of the reality. With that, freedom and creativity is abundant. In cinema, surrealism experiments with new techniques that revolutionized the film industry. Artists like Salvador Dalí, Germaine Dulac, Luis Buñuel, and Man Ray wanted to explore and showcase the inner workings of the subconscious mind. Considering the absurdity of our dreams and subconscious, one can imagine the shocking and rather disturbing images that surrealist artists attempt to depict. The artists are eager to examine and explore the human mind, often depriving the viewer of an easy to follow narrative. The audience is taken on a journey with no destination. Traditional film and social constructs are done away with and can no longer be used as guides for the viewers. The work of Surrealist filmmakers were able to establish film as a independent and unique form of visual art as it did not fit the traditions of the film industry. Dreams are not simply retold in Surrealist films. Rather, the artists attempt to replicate the process of a subconscious dream but providing illogical, irrational, and unexpected disruptions. Characters in the films appears to be without a will and seems to forfeit control, reflecting the complete submission experienced in dreams. Mass entertainment is rebelled against and the traditional depiction of institutions such as religions, family, or marriage are attacked.