Dali movies and other thoughts

MEO (meo@ego.psych.mcgill.ca)
Fri, 5 May 1995 08:46:41 -0400 (EDT)

The one film, Dali co-directed was Un Chien Andalou (sorry, don't know the
title in english). It wanted to have a surrealist structure. In fact, it
was just a-narrative (by opposition to non-narrative): supers said
"Meanwhile in an other part of the world" (and you'd be a the same place.
"A few years before that", etc. Those articulations while refeiring to the
narrative structure, just reminded from time to time to not look for one.
Yet again. You have a same figure, character, or even color that goes from
from "shot" to the next, you have a story. The story of the evolution of
that figure, character, color.

The model for surrealist creations was the dream. Maybe we can go back
there to seek for a surrealist narrative. In a dream, things don't have a
logical link, so it seems :). Things just happen. That is, when I write down
a dream I had, I am suprised of the lack of logic, the eclectic
(word) order of events. But what is interesting thouh, is that when I was
dreaming, everything seemed to make so much sense. In my dream, I have
often a mandate, a quest, a fear (therfore a story). But that story has
it's own logic. Not the one of outlands, rl, flesh world, or how ever you
call it. Things happen, I move, events are linked cause I'm changed in the
purpose. In the Carnaval structure, I'm the same in and out. Imagine it
with the following twist: I change, my actions have consequences (as
surrealist may they be). Therefor, my actions are linked and there is a
quest. A quest to see/live the results of my actions. That would give
suffisant links, basis of story telling with out killing the surrealistic
universe.

Don't know if all of this makes sense, I just woke up. And, sorry for my
spelling, english isn't my mother toung.

Mart!n Ouellette