Chicorée (1966)

The poet Urban Gwerder and his artist friends used to produce multimedia shows called Poëtenz (Poetence). Soon, FMM’s portrait film Chicorée became the focus and principal activity of these soirées. This ironic, poetic picture of Gwerder’s family life in black-and-white, with colour sequences that conjure up the poet’s flights into a dream world, culminates in an outdoors action-writing sequence and a leap into the clouds. Gwerder dreams he is Salvador Dalì, Alfred Jarry, the Beatles and Frank Zappa. He makes fun of conventional forms of protest, and FMM faithfully catches every inspiration and crazy notion: a kitchen appliance becomes a larger-than-life monster, the head of the neighbour, a socialist bookseller, turns red – hand-coloured on the negative –, the family eats spaghetti and dreams of suckling pig; the young son looks for his fairy-tale parents in a labyrinth of mirrors… Chicorée is a silent film with live music played by Celly Pastorini as the film was projected.