DeLuca 1 Ashley DeLuca Entertainment Technology Mr.

Johnson September 23, 2013 I-Search Paper I have been interested in Man Ray, Salvador Dali, and Luis Buuel and their influence in surrealist film ever since the first time I watched their short film, Chien Andalou. I thought that the film was incredibly strange and bizarre, and it made me curious about the surrealist movement. I didnt know very much about my topic before I began my research, even though I sort of understood what surrealism was because of its use in other mediums of art, such as paintings. I also had some prior knowledge of who Salvador Dali was because I studied his different paintings in art class. As I began my research, I had a few main questions about my topic that I hoped to answer. The first was how filmmaking was involved in the surrealist movement. Another was what directors/filmmakers were the most influential in the surrealist movement and why. Another question that I focused on in my research was what all of these directors had in common that linked them all together. After I formulated my questions, the first step I took in my research process was to find out exactly what surrealism was, how the surrealist movement affected all mediums of art, and what directors where the most influential. The second step was to look up all of the biographies of the directors I chose from reliable sources given to me by the librarian and to figure exactly what their achievements were in relation to surrealist filmmaking. Most of the sources that I utilized from DISCUS had useful information, but if I tried to look up some of the directors I

DeLuca 2 would often find that the article wasnt discussing surrealism in relation to film, which wasnt useful for me. In my research, I majorly focused on the lives and achievements of Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali, and Man Ray in order to understand what made them so influential in surrealist filmmaking. I began my research with Bunuel, who was the first child of seven children born into a prosperous, landowning family. When he grew up, he went on to study philosophy and literature at the University of Madrid. The surrealist Andre Breton and film director Jean Epstein first influenced him whenever he had traveled to Paris in 1925. Upon his return, Bunuel collaborated with Salvador Dali on two innovative surrealist films, Un Chien Andalou and L'ge d'or. He then decided to move to Hollywood. During the 1940s he helped supervise the production of anti-Nazi propaganda films. He then worked on The Adventures of Robin Crusoe, Viridiana, Simon of the Desert, and Tristana. After learning about Bunuel, I decided to try and achieve a better understanding of Man Rays achievements and contributions to surrealism in films. I learned that he first started out as a painter before adopting various mechanical and photographic methods of image making. Man Ray was a photographer, painter, and filmmaker who was the only American to play a major role in both the Dada and Surrealist movement. He then began working on surrealist experimental films whenever he traveled to Paris. He directed a number of influential avant-garde short films. He participated in many major surrealist exhibitions, took up surrealist caused, and illustrated surrealist publications. He was one of the leading artists of the avant-garde movement and a key figure in Dada and Surrealist movements. He was also one of the first to use the

DeLuca 3 rayograph technique in motion-picture film, which involved making patterns with salt, pepper, tacks, and pins. I then tried to learn more information about Salvador Dali, another of my directors I decided to focus on in my research. I discovered that his childhood was characterized by fits of anger against his parents and schoolmates and resultant acts of cruelty. As a result, he began to evolve his own style and immersed himself in the strange subjects of his fantasy world. His interest in surrealism was acquired through personal acquaintances and surrealists he had met when he visited Paris. Some of the characteristics of his work with surrealism include symbolism, abnormal psychology, and stressing sexual fantasies and fetishes. He became interested in film when he was young, going to the theatre most Sundays. He believed that there were two dimensions to the theories of film in cinema, which where the things you actually see and the photographic imagination that the camera can depict. This article also lists some of his works, including the ones he collaborated on such as the famous Un Chien Andalou. After concluding my research about the three directors I chose, I decided to do some final research into surrealisms roots to try and find out what may have influenced these directors to take part in the movement. I learned that the term surrealism is derived from the French word, surralisme, which was first coined by a writer named Guillaume Apollinaire in 1917. It was a movement in art and literature that sprang up between the first and second World Wars. The roots of surrealism began with the dada movement, which was founded in 1915 in Switzerland. By 1922 dada was dead, but its aesthetic and creative principles remain influential to a number of international artists and filmmakers. After Dadaism, the French avant-garde cinema that was produced to make its mark

DeLuca 4 against Hollywood influenced surrealism. This article also defines the unique characteristics of surrealism in film, which includes images that seem incompatible with each other that are juxtaposed to challenge the conventional expectations of art, and also images that must mark the beginning of an exploration into the unknown rather than merely representing a thing of beauty. It was heavily influenced by Freudian theories of psychoanalysis and its most prominent aim was to allow the artists unconscious to be expressed with complete creative freedom. It hoped to smash the barriers imposed on the arts by the need to conform and include elements of real life. In film, the element of performance that is essential to surrealism could be most accurately captured, so it had great success. The influence of surrealism even blossomed into the work of directors such as Fassbinder and Fellini. The movement was not emphasized on negation but on positive expression. The movement represented a reaction against what its members saw as the destruction wrought by the rationalism that had guided European culture and politics in the past and that had culminated in the horrors of WWI. There are a number of techniques that were utilized by surrealists to evoke psychic responses from the audience, including showing partial images that are intended to be completed in the mind of the viewer. This experience of researching Man Ray, Salvador Dali, Luis Buuel, and the surrealist movement has taught me many things that will be useful to me in completing the rest of my senior mastery, which focuses on surrealism. Now that I understand the aspects of these influential directors films, I can try to reflect their style in my own surrealist films. I also better understand exactly what surrealism is because through my research I had the opportunity to watch many example films and learn the basic structure

DeLuca 5 and characteristics of surrealism in film. I also had the opportunity to learn about the personal lives of the three directors I chose and better understand what sparked their interest in surrealism and what made them so successful. During the research process I also got to understand the roots of surrealism and how Sigmund Freuds ideals also influenced the movement. Another thing that I learned from this project is how to gather research and information more efficiently and what websites are trustworthy to gather information from and which ones are not. Through this project, I had the opportunity to strengthen my skills in summarizing and organizing data through the use of a bibliography, which made it a lot easier to formulate my ideas in a complete essay. Overall, I learned a lot from completing this research project and I now feel that I have a better complete understanding of surrealism and I can more accurately portray it in any films that I hope to create while completing my senior mastery.

DeLuca 6 Works Cited

Barry Keith Grant, Ed. "Surrealism." Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film. Vol. 4. New York: Schirmer Reference, 2007. 183-88. Print.

"Luis Buuel." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2nd ed. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 127-128. Print.

"Man Ray." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2nd ed. Vol. 13. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 59-60. Print.

"Salvador Dali." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2nd ed. Vol. 4. Detroit: Gale, 2004. 376-377. Print.

"Surrealism." Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd, 1993. Credo Reference. Web. 13 September 2013. <http://www.credoreference.com/topic/surrealism>