Dada and surrealist film

What do the graphic abstractions of Viking Eggeling and Hans Richter, the photographic experiments of Man Ray, the zany, anarchistic, iconographic provocations of René Clair and Francis Picabia, and the rhythmic collage of Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy all have in common? 

In the world of Dadaist film, iconographic subversion and abstraction mingle with the geometrism of forms and eroticism of bodies, paying no attention to meaning if not in terms of its very deconstruction. 

In the second half of the Twenties, Surrealist cinema, inspired by the exploration of dreams and the subconscious, and particularly the films of Germaine Dulac and Luis Buñuel, involved a return to the subject – seen as both the subject of the action and the subject of the narrative.

By screening some fifteen films, the exhibition endeavours to restore these different aspects of Dadaist and Surrealist cinema. 

From the first cinema abstractions of Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling to the subversive, dream-like style of Luis Buñuel, the exhibition reveals a world of film which, when avant-garde artists began to experiment with it in the Twenties, ceased to be simple entertainment and became an art in itself, using the qualities of sculpture, painting, drawing and music to create a new visual experience.