Max Ernst

A surreal film about surrealism.

This documentary celebrates Max Ernst, one of the most influential and visionary artists of the past century. The film covers the highlights of Ernst's fascinating career via a format that mirrors the restless reality of his life. An inveterate traveler and always on the move, Ernst lived and worked in Germany, France and America. His nomadic way of life kept him searching: "A painter is lost if he finds himself."

A pathetic police chief, humiliated by everyone around him, suddenly wants a clean slate in life, and resorts to drastic means to achieve it.

Ottinger’s debut film already contains many of the elements that would appear in her later works: an extraordinary woman, an unusual country, and a chain of magic transformations that give rise to eccentric characterizations by an ensemble cast, here featuring Tabea Blumenschein in multiple roles. Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Ottinger’s allegorical work explores themes of death, destruction, and resurrection. With striking camerawork reminiscent of the antics of avant-garde psychodramas, Laocoon & Sons is filled with an exuberant sense of life, myth, tradition, and magic.

"This film was presented as part of my 1969 thesis on Max Ernst. It was a personal tribute where I filmed his collages, then intercut live footage I shot with other reference material into a surreal visual collage." - Penny Slinger

Surrealist short film of images viewed to a surrealist poem by Max Ernst.

Max Ernst on amateur astronomer Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel.

Max Ernst on amateur astronomer Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel.

An overview of Luis Buñuel's career. Includes an interview with the filmmaker.

The inner world of the great painter Max Ernst is the subject of this film. One of the principal founders of Surrealism, Max Ernst explores the nature of materials and the emotional significance of shapes to combine with his collages and netherworld canvases. The director and Ernst together use the film creatively as a medium to explain the artist's own development.

8 x 8: A Chess-Sonata in 8 Movements is an American experimental film directed by Hans Richter, Marcel Duchamp, and Jean Cocteau. Described by Richter as "part Freud, part Lewis Carroll" and filmed partially on the lawn of Duchamp's summer house in Southbury, Connecticut.

The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.