Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its visual
artworks and writings. The aim was to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream
and reality." Artists painted unnerving, illogical scenes with photographic precision, created
strange creatures from everyday objects and developed painting techniques that allowed the
unconscious to express itself.[1]
Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur
From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, eventually affecting the visual
arts, literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and
practice, philosophy, and social theory.
Surrealist cinema is a modernist approach to film theory, criticism, and production with origins
in Paris in the 1920s. Related to Dadacinema, Surrealist cinema is characterised by
juxtapositions, the rejection of dramatic psychology, and a frequent use of shocking imagery.
The first Surrealist film was The Seashell and the Clergyman from 1928, directed by Germaine
Dulac from a screenplay byAntonin Artaud. Other films include Un Chien Andalou and L'Age
d'Or by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí
Surrealism draws upon irrational imagery and the subconscious mind. Surrealists should not,
however, be mistaken as whimsical or incapable of logical thought;rather, most Surrealists
promote themselves as revolutionaries.
Surrealism was the first literary and artistic movement to become seriously associated with
cinema,[3] though it has also been a movement largely neglected by film critics and historians
Surrealist filmmakers sought to re-define human awareness of reality by illustrating that the
"real" was little more than what was perceived as real; that reality was subject to no limits
beyond those mankind imposed upon it.[2] Breton once compared the experience of Surrealist
literature to "the point at which the waking state joins sleep.
Many Surrealist films tease us to find a narrative logic that is simply absent. Causality is as
evasive as in a dream. Instead, we find events juxtaposed for their disturbing effect