Calendar

Enjoy a Surreal evening of games, classic animated cartoons and films by the great Surrealist filmmakers. Devil Music Ensemble performs live, original scores.

Man Ray | Lee Miller, Partners in Surrealism is open for viewing throughout the evening. Refreshments available for purchase in the Atrium Café.

6:30–8 pm

Exquisite Corpse

In this classic Surrealist game, players collaborate to create an improbable creature.

Identity Cards

Explore your identity by using the Surrealist technique of juxtaposing unrelated ideas.

Surreal Landscapes

Create an imagined landscape and step into it for a photo-op.

Ghosts of a Friend

Turn a signature into a revealing work of art.

Films introduced by Michael Dow, doctoral candidate in fi lm studies at New York
University and teacher of fi lm and animation studies at Northeastern University, Boston.

7–8 pm

Surrealist games, a Disney classic and several ongoing films by Max Fleischer, the go-to guy for twisted cartoon animation.

Minnie the Moocher
1932, 8 minutes

Betty Boop and Cab Calloway and his band in a scat-filled crazy and timeless example of unhinged and creative artistic expression.

Little Dutch Mill
1934, 8.5 minutes

A miserly mill-keeper kidnaps two Dutch children, but their pet duck runs for help.

Dancing on the Moon
1935, 8 minutes

Honeymooning couples of various animal species take a rocket ship excursion to the moon. Spectacular lunar scenery.

Hunky and Spunky
1938, 9 minutes

Hunky (a mother donkey leading a human-free life in the American Southwest) protects her young offspring, Spunky from enslavement by a prospector looking for a pack animal.

Chicken a la King
1936, 7 minutes

A Mae West-like duck draws the sultan of the chickens into a love triangle.

Somewhere in Dreamland
1936, 9 minutes

In their dreams, two poor and hungry tots enter a fantasy kingdom where there are more sweets than they can eat.

Chess Nuts
1932, 6 minutes

Betty Boop is the black queen and Bimbo is the white king in this initially realistic chess game that becomes a chaotic, animated quest.

8–9 pm

Devil Music Ensemble returns to perform original musical accompaniments to five silent films from the 1920s. Previous engagements at PEM featured The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu.

Les Mystères du Château de Dé (Mysteries of the Chateau of Dice)
1929, 20 minutes, directed by Man Ray

Man Ray uses a spacious chateau and a rundown castle to explore spatial relationships and textures. Look for people wearing stockings over their heads, throwing huge dice and practicing weird diving and swimming formations in an indoor pool.

Vormittagsspuk (Ghosts Before Breakfast)
1928, 6 minutes, directed by Hans Richter

The German Dadaist filmmaker uses stop-motion animation to create an odd dream world featuring flying bowler hats.

Anémic Cinéma (Anemic Cinema)
1926, 7 minutes, directed by Marcel Duchamp

Duchamp's experimental film depicts whirling animated drawings — which he called Rotoreliefs — alternating with puns in French.

Ballet Mécanique (Mechanical Ballet)
1924, 11 minutes, produced and directed by Fernand Léger, photographed by Dudley Murphy (and, possibly, Man Ray)

This brief, non-narrative exploration of cubist form, black-and-white tonalities, and various vectors is conveyed through constant, rapidly cut movements and compositions.

Symphonie Diagonale (Diagonal Symphony)
1924, 7.5 minutes, directed by Viking Eggeling

A tilted figure grows with the addition of short straight lines and curves that sprout from the existing design. The figure vanishes and the process begins again with a new pattern, each cycle lasting one or two seconds.