Synopses & Reviews
Surrealist cinema, as epitomised by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuels
Un Chien Andalou and
LAge dOr, was a knife through the very heart of the establishment; a scorpionic, scatological black joke galvanized by the irrational, the uncanny, and the spectre of de Sade.
The Age Of Gold revisits these two seminal films, the process of collaborative psychic automatism which led to their creation, and the scandal and riots caused by their themes and images of sex, mutilation, sadism, murder and excremental mania.
The Age Of Gold also documents the experimental cinematic theories of Antonin Artaud, founder of the revolutionary Theatre of Cruelty; traces the precursors and parallels of Surrealist cinema in avant-garde and Dadaist film including the work of Hans Richter, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray and notes the filmic legacy of the movement in subsequent decades.
The Age Of Gold is illustrated by a host of striking images, and clearly shows how Surrealist film finally erupted from the throes of experimental cinema as well as from the art, texts and manifestos of the Surrealist Movement itself.
About the Author
Robert Short is the author of Surrealism: Permanent Revelation and Dada And Surrealism.