Man Ray

Un été à la Garoupe

La Garoupe, a beach in Antibes, in 1937. For one summer, the painter and photographer Man Ray films his friends Pablo Picasso, Dora Maar, Paul Eluard and his wife Nusch, as well as Lee Miller. During these few weeks, love, friendship, poetry, photography and painting are still mixed in the carefree and the creativity specific to the artistic movements of the interwar period.

William Wegman: Video Work 1970-1999

From 1970-1977 William Wegman created some of the most innovative and important works in the history of video. These early pioneering tapes were created using minimal technology and a few studio props, including Wegman’s canine companion, Man Ray. Consisting of 130 works, some no longer than a television commercial, blurred the boundaries between high and low art as well as art and commerce, and have become a major chapter in the histories of contemporary art and film. This exhaustive compilation has been assembled by the artist with restored material and it contains all nine original reels as well as two later reels. Classics such as Pocketbook Man, Milk/Floor, Stomach Song, Cape On, Stick and Tooth, Spelling Lesson, Dog Duet, Man Ray, Do You Want to? Are included.

About Special Effects

This film deals with the theme of the heritage left to the underground cinema by the historical avant-garde.

Man Ray: Prophet of the Avant-Garde

Man Ray, the master of experimental and fashion photography was also a painter, a filmmaker, a poet, an essayist, a philosopher, and a leader of American modernism. Known for documenting the cultural elite living in France, Man Ray spent much of his time fighting the formal constraints of the visual arts. Ray’s life and art were always provocative, engaging, and challenging.

Lee Miller: Through the Mirror

Biographical documentary of Lee Miller (aka Elizabeth Miller, 1907-1977), her early years in USA under her father's influence, later became a model turned artist and celebrated photographer, including her photojournalism during WWII, and her second marriage to British surrealism painter Roland Penrose postwar. Film is told through interviews with Miller's son, Antony Penrose.

Dog Duet

"In the piece we see the two dogs staring at the camera in a dark room. Their eyes are intently following something off camera. Sometimes their head movement is pull into the action as they crane to follow the whatever it is in various left right and up down directions. At one point the action seems to stop and the dogs begin to blink in syncopation. At this point Hooka settles down into a lying position but Man Ray remains riveted. Towards the end piece the dogs crane to look behind them and at one miraculous moment their motions counter each other. At the end we see the object of their attention…in my hand, a tennis ball."

Dada

1967 film directed by Greta Deseson about the Dada art movement. Featuring Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Max Ernst, Hans Richter and Gabrièle Buffet-Picabia

Grimace

Produced over several years between 1962 and 1967, Grimaces shows the faces of over a hundred artists, gallery owners and critics grimacing to the camera.

Dadascope

Free-associative images are juxtaposed with disorienting poetry in Richter's late work. The film is visual dynamite: Upside-down and reversed footage, play with shadows and light, billiards and dice and balloons-- suggestive and surreal images. Tenets of Dada writing, such as games of chance, punnery, wordplay and loud nonsense noise are foist upon the viewer as Dada poems are read / performed by their orignal authors.

8 x 8: A Chess-Sonata in 8 Movements

8 x 8: A Chess-Sonata in 8 Movements is an American experimental film directed by Hans Richter, Marcel Duchamp, and Jean Cocteau. Described by Richter as "part Freud, part Lewis Carroll" and filmed partially on the lawn of Duchamp's summer house in Southbury, Connecticut.

Juliet

A late period home movie with Man Ray and his lovely friend Juliet Browner lounging together in the US. Man Ray had returned to America when the Germans occupied France.

Ady

Very brief view of Man Ray and his friend Ady Fidelin while at a seaside resort

Dance

Home movie from Man Ray featuring dancer Jenny gyrating in black and white.

La Garoupe

Home movie from Man Ray while on vacation with Pablo Picasso, Paul, Nusch and Cecile Eluard, Emily Davies, Valerie and Roland Penrose. The friends have fun with themselves and performing for the camera.

Poison

Short black and white surrealist film from Man Ray starring himself and Meret Oppenheim.

Self-Portrait or What We All Miss

Mix of surrealist images of bubbles and smoke with some documentation of the world lived by Man Ray and Lee Miller.

The Mysteries of the Chateau of Dice

Mannequin hands hold a pair of dice. A castle is perched on a hilltop. Below it, a posh, modern villa. Meanwhile, far from Paris, two men with masked faces play dice in a bar. They decide to drive to Paris. Country roads, hills, fences. The posh "chateau" appears again: meticulous garden, fancy interior, odd sculptures. And at home? "No one, NO ONE." For the next two days, masked figures play dice, frolic by the pool, perform exercises with a ball. Two new figures arrive. Masked. They search and find the dice. They dance. Mannequin hands hold a pair of dice.

Entr'acte

Stop-motion photography blends with extreme slow-motion in Clair's first and most 'dada' film, composed of a series of zany, interconnected scenes. We witness a rooftop chess match between Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, a hearse pulled by a camel (and chased by its pallbearers) and a dizzying roller coaster finale. A film of contradictions and agreements.