SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
VIEWINGS
6:30pm AGE OF GOLD 7:30pm THE SEASHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN 7:45pm ANEMIC CINEMA 9pm AN ANDALUSIAN DOG 9:30pm THE MYSTERIES OF THE CHÂTEAU DE DÉ 10pm THE STARFISH
SPEAKERS
Curator DAN THOMPSON Historian TIFFANY MORENO Curator KEVIN MATSUYA
AGE OF GOLD
L’Age d’Or
The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.
release date November 28, 1930 location Paris run time 60 minutes format 35mm B&W
6:30PM director & writer writer
LUIS BUÑUEL SALVADOR DALÍ
DAN THOMPSON
art historian
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.
TIFFANY MORENO
LEAD CURATOR AT MoMA
With 30 years of experience working at top art institutions 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.
KATHERINE MATSUYA ARTIST
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.
6:45PM THE BIRTH OF SURREALISM Surrealism revolutionized the art of cinema with new techniques and approaches that freed it from traditional story-telling, transforming the medium into one that could explore, reveal, and possibly even replicate the inner-workings of the subconscious mind. Surrealist films often leave us with shocking images that lodge themselves into our psyche and deprive us of easily legible narratives, while at the same time prove compelling in their deep, ultimately neo-romantic expressions of desire. The movie screen becomes a portal through which the viewer can journey where the traditional common constructs can no longer be reliable guides, from a clergyman’s sexual dreams to a poet’s quest through a mirror, from an obsession with a starfish to a wound that emits live ants.
THE SEASHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN
La coquille et le clerg yman
The Seashell and the Clergyman penetrates the skin of material reality and plunges the viewer into an unstable landscape where the image cannot be trusted. The film follows the erotic hallucinations of a priest lusting after the wife of a general. The film changed from scene to scene with long extended scenes full of repetition and silence creating a dazed feel throughout.
release date February 9, 1928 location Paris run time 28 minutes format 35mm B&W
7:30PM director & writer
GERMAINE DULAC
ANEMIC CINEMA
Anémic Cinéma
Anémic Cinéma is a Dadaist, surrealist, or experimental film made by Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. The film depicts whirling animated drawings—which Duchamp called Rotoreliefs—alternated with puns in French. The text, which spirals in a counterclockwise motion suggests a set up of erotic scenarios. Duchamp creates a duality of silence and loudness through images. Duchamp signed the film with his alter ego name of Rrose Sélavy.
release date 1926 location Paris run time 7 minutes format 16mm B&W
7:45PM directors CINEMATOGRAPHER
MAN RAY & MARCEL DUCHAMP MAN RAY
AN ANDALUSION DOG Un Chien Andalou
Un Chien Andalou has no plot in the conventional sense of the word. The chronology of the film is disjointed, jumping from the initial “once upon a time” to “eight years later” without events or characters changing. It uses dream logic in narrative flow that can be described in terms of the then-popular Freudian free association, presenting a series of tenuously related scenes.
release date June 6, 1929 location Paris run time 21 minutes format 35mm B&W
9:00PM director writer
LUIS BUÑUEL SALVADOR DALÍ & LUIS BUÑUEL
THE MYSTERIES OF THE CHÂTEAU DE DÉ
Les Mystères du Château de Dé
Mannequin hands hold a pair of dice. A castle is perched on a hilltop. Below it, a posh, modern villa. Meanwhile, far from Paris, two men with masked faces play dice in a bar. They decide to drive to Paris. Country roads, hills, fences. The posh “chateau” appears again: meticulous garden, fancy interior, odd sculptures. And at home? “No one, no one.” For the next two days, masked figures play dice, frolic by the pool, perform exercises with a ball. Two new figures arrive. Masked. They search and find the dice. They dance. Mannequin hands hold a pair of dice.
release date 1929 location Paris run time 27 minutes format 35mm B&W
9:30PM director
MAN RAY
THE STARFISH
L’Étoile de mer
L’Étoile de mer is a 1928 film directed by Man Ray and based on a short poem and longer scenario, both written by Robert Desnos. The film depicts a couple acting through scenes that are shot out of focus, and with Desnos himself as the second man in the final scene.
release date 1928 location Paris run time 17 minutes format 35mm B&W
10:00PM director
MAN RAY