Man Ray Films GME Distributes Play at Brattle Theatre

STILL: MAN RAY’S RETURN TO REASON (1923). SOURCE: GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.

From Friday, May 31st, to Monday, June 3rd, four films by Man Ray — RETURN TO REASON, EMAK-BAKIA, L’ETOILE DE MER, and LES MYSTERES DU CHATEAU DU DE — will play at Boston’s Brattle Theatre (on the occasion of 2023 being the 100th anniversary of RETURN TO REASON) in the program MAN RAY: RETURN TO REASON. GME distributes Ray’s RETURN TO REASON and EMAK-BAKIA to the North American university market in the eight-film DVD collection CINÉMA DADA. This collection also includes films by early experimental cinema pioneers like Hans Richter and Fernand Léger.

Ray is widely considered one of the most important visual artists of the 20th century and a major figure in both the Dadaist and Surrealist art movements. His work spanned filmmaking, photography, collage, and assemblage, though he considered himself a painter above all else.

GIF: MAN RAY’S EMAK-BAKIA (1926). SOURCE: GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.

In his expressionistic three-minute short film RETURN TO REASON, Ray uses a number of photograms, combined with animated textures, nighttime footage of a merry-go-round, and the image of light falling on a woman’s nude torso, to conjure a dreamlike work of cinematic avant-gardism. EMAK-BAKIA, described by Ray as a “cinepoem,” offers a surreal perspective (via photograms, double exposures, and a variety of additional in-camera effects) of everyday objects.

Sqürl, the collaborative project of Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan, will present Ray’s films at the Brattle, and provide a newly-recorded drone-rock soundtrack for them. The restoration process for these films was led by Womanray and Cinenovo sourcing original prints from various parts of the world, in partnership with La Cinémathèque française, the Centre Pompidou, the Library of Congress, the French CNC, and Cineteca di Bologna.