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| Man Ray: Le Retour à la raison (FR 1923) featuring Kiki de Montparnasse. |
LOVE & ANARCHY: HELSINKI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (HIFF) 2023
AA: My program note for HIFF 2023 catalog (print and online):
Pariisin villillä 1920-luvulla Man Ray ohjasi neljä avantgarde-elokuvan merkkipaalua Kiki de Montparnassen innoittamana. 100-vuotisjuhlan kunniaksi ne on restauroitu, ja Jim Jarmusch ja Carter Logan ovat luoneet niihin visuaalista musiikkia kuin kyseessä olisi kokonaisteos.
Man Ray (1890-1976), maalari ja valokuvaaja dadaismin ja surrealismin ytimessä, oli ohittamaton ja luokittelematon, myös oman tekniikkansa perustaja. Rayogrammeilla tarkoitetaan ilman kameraa suoraan negatiiville luotuja kuvia.
Vuonna 1921 Man Ray kohtasi lumoavan Alice Prinin (Kiki de Montparnasse), joka oli Pariisin legendaarisen 1920-luvun keskushahmoja taiteilijana ja mallina. He olivat yhdessä kahdeksan vuotta, ja sinä aikana syntyivät Man Rayn neljä kuuluisinta elokuvaa Le Retour à la raison (1923), Emak-Bakia (1926), L’Étoile de mer (1928) ja Les Mystères du Château de Dé (1929). Ne ovat rakkausrunoja. Kysymys ”mieskatseesta” on surrealistien kohdalla epäilemättä aina aiheellinen. Mutta Kiki de Montparnasse on naissubjekti. Hän katsoo ja haastaa meitä.
Kuvarunoissaan Man Ray näyttää meille taivaan merkit. Niissä on tähtitaivas ja meritähti. Niissä on tulikukkia ja vauhdin hurmaa. Niissä kiihottavat naisen muodot ja peilautuvat katseet. Ne ovat kineettistä taidetta, jossa on monivalotuksia, päällekkäiskuvia, abstrakteja valoilmiöitä, geometrisiä muotoja, negatiivikuvia, 360 asteen panorointeja ja tietenkin rayogrammeja. Mutta myös tanssin ja transsin hurmiota. Niistä kasvaa elävä virta, tajunnanvirta, matka ulkoiseen ja sisäiseen.
Man Rayn elokuvat ovat innoittaneet taiteilijasukupolvia sadan vuoden ajan. Tänä vuonna sai Cannesin elokuvajuhlilla ensiesityksensä neljän mykkäklassikon uusi digitaalinen esityskokonaisuus. Restaurointi on tyylikäs, ja kuvia siivittää Sqürlin (Jim Jarmuschin ja Carter Loganin) musiikki. Man Rayn elokuvat on tuotu nykypäivään tavalla, joka houkuttelee palaamaan niihin seuraavat sata vuotta. "
Antti Alanen (HIFF 2023)
...
MATERIAL FROM PREVIOUS 2023 FESTIVALS
Return to Reason is a 100th anniversary restoration of Man Ray’s cinematic œuvre, restored for the first time in 4K. All four films were inspired by Kiki de Montparnasse. Now they have inspired Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan to create visual music as if they were forming one unique piece.
BOLOGNA: IL CINEMA RITROVATO 2023
RETURN TO REASON: ORIGINAL SHORT FILMS
In 1923, Man Ray improvises his first film. This movie, boldly surrealist, is called Le Retour à la raison. Subsequently, he renews the experience with Emak Bakia in 1926, L’Étoile de mer in 1928 and Les Mystères du château de Dé in 1929.
Le Retour à la raison deconstructs cinema in all its aspects. On the one hand, Man Ray emphasises the fragment, or series of fragments, denying any sense of unifying wholeness (independently of the principle of unity: story, theme, style). He explains his choices in a piece published in “Close Up” in 1927: “You can appreciate the abstract beauty of a classical work much better through a fragment than the whole; in a similar fashion, this film attempts to reveal the essential elements of contemporary cinema”. However, the film also negates the fundamental components of the medium itself: its material base and the use of light. Instead of filming, we have the “rayogram”, a direct printing/impression on the negative; there is no division between individual frames, but rather a violation of the tiny gaps that are normally rendered invisible during projection, and there is a deliberate lack of respect for the chemical nature of the celluloid base. Moreover, movement is not recorded but deliberately constructed, and the traditional boundaries of the representation of space and objects are overturned (high/ low, the tidy organisation of the frame, proportionality, perpendicular framing, and a prism-effect that duplicates the same shot in a single image). Similar violations are also applied to the treatment of time (repetition) and the notion that the various elements should be coherently linked (heterogeneity of the successive images). François Albera, Avanguardie, Il Castoro, Milan 2004
LE RETOUR À LA RAISON
Director: Man Ray
Year: 1923
Country: Francia
Scen.: Man Ray. Int.: Kiki de Montparnasse. DCP. D.: 3’. Bn
EMAK-BAKIA
Director: Man Ray
Year: 1926
Country: Francia
Scen.: Man Ray. Int.: Kiki de Montparnasse. DCP. D.: 19’. Bn
L’ÉTOILE DE MER
Director: Man Ray
Year: 1928
Country: Francia
Scen.: Man Ray. Int.: Kiki de Montparnasse. DCP. D.: 27’. Bn
LES MYSTÈRES DU CHÂTEAU DE DÉ
Director: Man Ray
Year: 1929
Country: Francia
Running time: 27'
Scen.: Man Ray. Int.: Kiki de Montparnasse. DCP. D.: 27’. Bn
...
CANNES CLASSICS 2023
In 1923, Man Ray improvises his first film. This movie, boldly surrealist, is called Le Retour à la raison. Subsequently, he renews the experience with Emak Bakia in 1926, L‘Étoile de mer in 1928 and Les Mystères du château de Dé in 1929.
In 2023, Jim Jarmush and Carter Logan, the founding members of the group Sqürl, compose a soundtrack to the four films as if they were forming one unique piece.
Return To Reason celebrates the 100th anniversary of Man Ray’s cinematic Œuvre, restored for the first time in 4K. Il reveals the unique dialogue between two multitalented artists, and creates an undefinable object, a piece of visual music that resonates through its modernity and poetry.
Directed by : Man RAY
Year of production: 2023
Country: France
Duration: 70
When Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan, founders of the alternative rock group Sqürl, encounter Man Ray. In Return to Reason, screened at Cannes Classics in their presence, the New York duo puts into music four short films in a row from the surrealist photographer to celebrate the centenary of his work.
After their collaboration on the feature film Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), selected at Cannes in 2013, Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan are bacck with a musical cinematographic project in the form of a sonic exlporation.
The American director and producer have reformed their duo, Sqürl, to take on Man Ray’s cinematic work. Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan have imagined the music of four of the photographer’s silent films: Le Retour à la raison (1923, 19 minutes), Emak Bakia (Leave Me Alone, 1926, 19 minutes), L‘Étoile de mer (The Starfish) (1928, 17 minutes) andLes Mystères du château de dé (1929, 25 minutes).
The group brought together the four films as a single and unique artistic object and developed a semi-improvised score that relies on loops, synthesizers and effected guitars, in a vein that is deeply experimental, to create a visual, sonic and musical shock. The result also reveals an original dialogue between two multi-disciplinary artists and forms an unidentified object, a visual music that is affecting through its modernity and its poetry.
Produced by Womanray (Marieke Tricoire) and Cinenovo (Julie Viez). Films directed by Man Ray. Music composed and performed by Sqürl (Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan).
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