NOVEMBER 14-15, 2008: SURREALIST CLASSICS AT EYEDRUM

NOVEMBER 14-15, 2008
SURREALIST CLASSICS AT EYEDRUM
CO-SPONSORED BY THE CULTURAL SERVICES OF THE FRENCH EMBASSY

Friday, November 14: Part 1
Surrealist Science: the world of Jean Painlevé
8:00 PM at Eyedrum

Eyedrum presents the first evening of its film series Surrealist Classics, featuring the astonishing underwater films of scientist and Surrealist fellow-traveler Jean Painlevé, along with a classic by his friend Jean Vigo, and a selection of very early science and medicine films from 1880s-1920s France. Son of a Prime Minister, Surrealist author, collaborator with Antonin Artaud, and underwater scientist, Jean Painlevé was above all a filmmaker of extraordinary visual sense and sly wit. He was as much a part of the Surrealist movement as the scientific community, and his breathtaking images of sea life – mating octopi, seahorses giving birth, microscopic detail of sea urchins – have a built-in affinity with Surrealism.

A selection of Painlevé’s recently rediscovered films will be accompanied by some of his influences: a remarkable medical film from the 1890s, Etienne-Jules Marey’s early moving image experiments from the 1880s, and Jean Comandon’s 1920s science films of plants blooming in time-lapse and mushroom cells feeding. Finally, Painlevé’s artistic friendship with the great director Jean Vigo will be explored with a screening of Vigo’s A Propos de Nice – a surreal documentary on the French seaside city.

Program:
Etienne Jules-Marey, early moving image experiments, 1880s, 3 minutes
Dr. Doyen, La séparation des Sœurs Siamoises (The Separation of Siamese Twins), 1898, 2 minutes

Films by Jean Comandon:
Les Champignons Prédateurs (Predatory Mushrooms), excerpt
Le Croissance des végétaux (The Growth of Plants), excerpt

Films by Jean Painlevé:
Hyas et Sténorinques (Hyas and Stenorhynchus), 1929, 10 minutes
L’Hippocampe (The Sea Horse), 1934, 14 minutes
Oursins (Sea Urchins), 1954, 10 minutes
Les amours de la pieuvre (The Love Life of the Octopus), 1965, 13 minutes
Acéra ou le bal des sorcières (Acera or the Witches’ Dance), 1972, 10 minutes
Jean Vigo, A Propos de Nice, 1930, 20 minutes, screened in 16mm

Eyedrum
290 Martin Luther King Jr Dr Suite 8, Atlanta, GA, 30312
404.522.0655
www.eyedrum.org
http://andel.home.mindspring.com/surrealism01_painleve.htm
http://andel.home.mindspring.com/surrealism02_bunuel.htm