Return to Reason: Four Films by Man Ray

Spirals, shadows, fragments of bodies, reflections of light: Man Ray's works function less as narratives than as states between dream, play, and experiment. In them, cinema becomes a playground for surrealist ideas, abstract forms, and erotic associations. Objects are placed directly onto the film, images are superimposed, movements distorted, and it seems as if the medium itself suddenly begins to hallucinate. Together with the music of Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan, the restored short films create a hypnotic pull somewhere between Dada, the avant-garde, and nocturnal urban poetry, which understands cinema not as a window to the world, but rather as a machine that allows us to delve deep into the unconscious.

(Florian Widegger)