Event
Dream Theater: Surrealist Cinema at Oddball FilmsPost an Event »
Oddball Films presents Dream Theater: Surrealist Cinema, a night of 16mm short films and animation that delve into the non-narrative world of dreams and dream logic with works by Man Ray, Roman Polanski, Georges Melies, Maurice Sendak, Istvan Szabo, Busby Berkeley and more. Realism is overrated and this program explores the magnitude of creative expression when freed from the constraints of rational and linear structures.
Man Ray's surrealist classic L'Etoile de Mer (1928) captures the furtive, flirting moments of sexual desire, ever so dreamily obscured. Two men emerge from the sea and search for meaning in a meaningless world in Roman Polanski's early short Two Men and a Wardrobe (1958). István Szabó's A Dream About a House (1972) wryly demonstrates the absurdities of war when contrasted with the consistencies of the familial unit. Georges Melies employs his magic bag of cinematic tricks to bring to life the story of the infamous hallucinating nobleman in excerpts from Baron Munchausen's Dream (1911). Busby Berkeley choreographs a dreamy musical sequence featuring hundreds of bathing beauties in By a Waterfall from Footlight Parade (1933). Slip off into a dream world of cannibal cooks, naked babies and delicious pastry with the beloved banned children's classic In the Night Kitchen (1975) and join cartoon heroine Little Lulu as she hits her head and ends up in a bizarro nightmare of celebrity babies and bartending storks in The Babysitter (1947).