Return to Reason: Four Films by Man Ray

We feel very proud to be Man Ray’s backup band. I think ultimately what we’re trying to do, and what Man Ray did, was create a sort of ecstatic state. A place that exists in a little space between consciousness and unconsciousness, between dream and wakefulness, and between reality and the surreal world.”

Jim Jarmusch, SQÜRL

The four films Man Ray directed between 1923 and 1929—Le retour à la raisonEmak-BakiaL’étoile de mer, and Les mystères du château du dé—represent a high watermark of early European avant-garde cinema, a seminal nexus of experimental technique, surrealist narrative, and playful abstraction as suffused with dark eroticism. In these films, Ray began discovering the limitless possibilities of montage, as well as the direct application onto celluloid of objects such as salt, pepper, pins, and thumbtacks. In celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of Le retour à la raison, the Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan combo, SQÜRL, presents Return to Reason. The band’s cosmic sounds complement Ray’s work by conjuring the beautiful, ineffable, haunting, and sublime. 

Janus Films
FILM DETAILS 
Language
  • French
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • B&W/Color
  • DCP
  • Silent
  • 70 mins
Source
  • Janus Films
Additional Info
  • with a newly recorded soundtrack by SQÜRL

Event Accessibility

If you have any questions about accessibility or require accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us at bampfa@berkeley.edu or call us at (510) 642-1412 (during open hours) with as much advance notice as possible. More information on accessibility services.