Mid-June is heating up with a marvellously exciting night of surrealism in film with live musical scores at Corre Alice Gallery in Cumberland.
Presented by the Inner Island Surrealist Group in conjunction with the collective's debut show Funeral of Empire, which has been held over for the duration of June due to popular response, the evening will focus on the imaginative and subversive potential of film and music.
Providing a textured and extremely varied soundtrack of diverse sounds will be the Frog Orchard Assassins, a collaboration of improvising creative musicians from the Comox Valley and Vancouver.
Featuring the short experimental films of internationally acclaimed Czech Surrealist Jan Svankmajer (Darkness, Light, Darkness, Etcetera, A Game of Stones), American animator, ethnographer and mystic Harry Smith (Early Abstractions) and the 1969 film adaptation of Max Ernst's 1929 collage novel La femme 100 tetes by Eric Duvivier.
The gallery is also very proud to feature The Affair (1975 10 minutes) starring longtime Courtenay resident and widely admired esoteric artist Manuel Fernandez. Directed by internationally awarded Rafal Zielinski, The Affair (shot in Montreal in 1975) was Rafal's ambitious experimental short film debut in his now-successful movie career.
Zielinski gave Manuel carte blanche to improvise — no second takes during filming. Fernandez' (an experimental modern dance theatre performer and teacher of “living events” for many years) performance is a triumph of the improvisational and creative spirit that takes us on a wondrous adventure of movement through the ambiance of mid-70s Montreal.
The evening of film surrealism happens this Saturday. Doors open at 9 p.m. Admission is $5 to $10, based on a sliding scale. Ginger tea will be available for a small donation.
— Corre Alice Gallery