Programmer’s Welcome

By Melody Jacobson (CSIF Programming Coordinator)

Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality.*

Welcome to the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers’ inaugural Surrealism Film Festival, a celebration  of the depth of the imaginative realms.  The festival was inspired by the 80th anniversary of the seminal film Un Chien Andalou by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí and includes a screening of that film as well as contemporary media art works, a spoken word performance and a special radio program devoted to Surrealism sound art.

Un Chien Andalou, the last film in our program, was a divine collaboration between two great minds that, in keeping with a basic tenet of the Surrealists, set out to make a film that didn’t make rational sense. Buñuel and Dalí deliberately wrote the film to avoid narrative structure or meaning in any way, and yet countless analyses have tried to impose a storyline in the symbolism.  Indeed it is difficult to watch the film and stop our minds from trying to connect the dots rather than see it for what it is, a magnificent dive into the fantastic, the mystical, the world of dreams.  This is the core of surrealism, and as the Surrealists maintained it is important to gather truth—both universal and personal—from the images and symbols is that the bedrock from which our collective unconscious draws meaning.

I would like to sleep, in order to surrender myself to the dreamers, the way I surrender myself to those who read me with eyes wide open; in order to stop imposing, in this realm, the conscious rhythm of my thought.*

The Surrealist movement caught fire with artists from every medium, inspiring the visual, literary, musical and performing arts to plumb the depths of consciousness and push boundaries to create new works that resonated and inspired countless generations and regenerations of theme and content.  The contemporary media art works in the program are perfect examples of how Surrealism has evolved throughout the years, with themes ranging from the intensely personal (Tell Us The Truth Josephine, perhaps / We, Melty Kitty, My Life in Dreams, Foodie, Hallucination de la mort de Guy de Maupassant) to the existential (Copy Shop, Wor, Alone, Citadel, Grotesque, Machine Guts, La Invención (The Invention), Yesterday’s Wine, At the Heart of It All, The Cat’s Pajamas, The Fever of the Western Nile,).  Love and personal identity are explored in excruciating and touching ways (Red Like Meat, Falling, Love Songs, The Traveling Eye of the Blue Cat, Morning Will Come) and experimental examinations of the unconscious abound throughout the program (Memory Lapse, Skull & Blackberries, Professor Delusia, the Nocturnalist, On Phenomena & Existences No. 3, Three Minute Miracle, Dali Ants, Seahorses and Flying Fish, Citadel). One film that stands as a direct reference to Un Chien Andalou is the squirm-inducing Botched Eyeball Operation, a one-minute tribute to the infamous sliced eyeball scene in the film.

In keeping with other art forms that were inspired by Surrealism, we also have a special radio program that is part of the Festival.  Hosted by the amazing Paula Fayerman, Programming Coordinators Melody Jacobson and Melanie Wilmink will be joining Paula on her CJSW program Noise beginning at 9 pm until 10:30 pm on Thursday, Nov. 27 to explore Surrealism’s influence on music and sound art.  We have also programmed a spoken word performance by Christian Bök to take place at the Plaza Theatre to begin Saturday night’s program.  Calgary-based Christian Bök is an experimental poet and critic, who is internationally recognized for his work.

The CSIF is immensely proud to present this program in Calgary, an experience that will certainly inspire, exhilarate and possibly terrify all who attend.  It is our hope that by taking part in the festival as audience members, you will all leave the theatre changed by your experience and be inspired to celebrate the surreal in this world of ours.

It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.*
*André Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism  (1924)

~ by surrealfilm on December 1, 2008.