Magical History Tour – Terra surrealis

Looking back at the first editions of the Berlinale Forum (which was called the International Forum of Young Cinema at the time) in the early 1970s, it is striking that for several years, classical cinematic Surrealism provided the focus for small excursions into film history within the main overall program: Buñuel's long-banned film L'ÂGE D'OR was shown, followed by surreal works by Man Ray, Germaine Dulac and Maya Deren. All of these films embraced André Breton's idea of a "surréalité" – ‘the resolution of the two states of dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak.” - creating radically new visual worlds and associated optical experiences, which met with fierce resistance from the audience not infrequently. We will make the most of the focus of that time to look at a look at surreal repercussions in later films, starting out from examples of Surrealist cinema of the 1920s, and present a selection of expeditions into unreal, artful, fantastic (nightmarish) dreamscapes. (Milena Gregor)