FILM RESCUE: 16mm Films from the UIC Daley Library

FILM RESCUE presents HALF-SLEEP Blood of a Poet, Jean Cocteau Preceded by Un Chien Andalou, Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dalí

Monday, September 26th, 7pm Screening Room (3226), AEH Building (400 S Peoria Street, Chicago, IL 60607) FREE

“Most of Aesop’s fables have many different levels and meanings. There are those who make myths of them by choosing some feature that fits in well with the fable. But for most of the fables this is only the first and most superficial aspect. There are others that are more vital, more essential and profound, that they have not been able to reach.” – Montaigne

For its inaugural screening, FILM RESCUE presents a profound pairing of seminal works produced during the formative years of a purely idiosyncratic cinematic language. HALF-SLEEP features Blood of a poet preceded by Un Chien Andalou, both of which slip into seductive yet startling disruptions of spatiotemporal determination. From their beginnings, narrative causality is sacrificed in favor of what Michael Koller suggests via Senses of Cinema, “to watch with your eyes and emotions and not to seek an explanation.” Spectators are summoned as Jean Cocteau leads the audience through labyrinthine lunacies as well as the traumas and triumphs accompanying the artistic process. Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí conduct unconscious, irrational aggressions and alleviations upon unsuspecting victims. From death to birth, these groundbreaking films shatter worn out preconceptions of what the moving image embodies, as Cocteau evokes, “by letting the mind relax, as in sleep, it lets memories entwine, move and express themselves freely.”

Un Chien Andalou, Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dalí, France, b/w, sound, 1928

“Our only rule was very simple: No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted. We had to open all doors to the irrational and keep only those images that surprised us, without trying to explain why.” – Luis Buñuel

“the pure and correct line of ‘conduct’ of a human who pursues love through wretched humanitarian, patriotic ideals and the other miserable workings of reality.” – Salvador Dalí

Blood of a Poet, Jean Cocteau, France, b/w, sound, 1930

“Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue! Free to choose the faces, the gestures, the tones, the acts, the places that please him, he composes with them a realistic documentary of unreal events. The musician will underline the noises and silences. The author dedicates this group of allegories to Pisanello, Paolo Uccello, Piero della Francesca, Andrea del Castagno, who were all painters of insignias and enigmas.” – Jean Cocteau