LÉGER & MURPHY / PICABIA & CLAIR / MAN RAY & DUCHAMP
Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy BALLET MÉCANIQUE (1924, 19 min, 35mm, silent. Preserved by Anthology Film Archives.) "The two fundamental works of the graphic cinema from the 1920s made without animation were Fernand Léger's BALLET MÉCANIQUE and Marcel Duchamp's ANEMIC CINEMA. By extending a metaphor from several of his paintings into film, Léger compared a universe of human actions and everyday objects to the functions of a machine." –P. Adams Sitney, VISIONARY FILM René Clair & Francis Picabia ENTR'ACTE (1924, 22 min, 35mm) One of the indisputable masterpieces of Dada cinema, ENTR'ACTE was created, as its title suggests, to function as a diversion in between the two acts of Francis Picabia and Erik Satie's avant-garde ballet RELÂCHE. Man Ray LE RETOUR À LA RAISON (1923, 2 min, 16mm, silent) ÉTOILE DE MER (1927, 13 min, 16mm, silent) EMAK BAKIA (1927, 18 min, 35mm, silent) "All the films I have made have been improvisations. I did not write scenarios. It was automatic cinema. I worked alone. My intention was to set in motion the compositions I made in photography. As for the camera, I use it to capture something I do not want to paint. But I am not interested in producing 'beautiful photography' for the cinema." –Man Ray, "All the Films I Have Made" (1965) Marcel Duchamp & Man Ray ANEMIC CINEMA (1926, 7 min, 35mm, silent) "Duchamp alternates head-on views of his illusion-producing roto-reliefs with similarly turned discs of words, elaborate French puns printed spirally, creating a fluctuation of illusory depth within a very narrow spectrum (from the slightly convex or slightly concave illusions) to the flat readings. In this, his only film, Duchamp typically crystallized the significance of the graphic film." –P. Adams Sitney, VISIONARY FILM CLICK HERE TO BOOK TICKETS NOW!