Man Ray's newly-restored surrealist films screening at TIFF Bell Lightbox, Wednesday

Four of Man Ray's silent surrealist shorts have been digitally restored with new soundtracks created by Jim Jarmusch's Sqürl. 

TIFF Wavelength presents...

Return to Reason (Retour à la Raison)

Man Ray

France | 76m | silent

TIFF Bell Lightbox (350 King St. West) 

Wednesday, June 12 at 6:30 pm

New 4K digital restoration!

Introduction by TIFF Cinematheque Coordinator Vicky Wong and Wavelength Music Artistic/Executive Director Jonathan Bunce.

In 1923 Paris, American expat Man Ray — one of the major proponents of Dada and Surrealism — made the first of his four silent avant-garde films, Le Retour à la raison. A hundred years later, Sqürl ― the atmospheric “marginal rock band” composed of Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan ― performed and recorded a semi-improvised score to this now-legendary quartet of shorts (1923–1929), newly and wondrously restored. The hypnotic Sqürl score terrifically enhances their dreamlike qualities, which were created using solarizing techniques (the artist’s signature “rayographs”), in addition to his use of diffused and refracted glass. These Freudian gossamer abstractions include explorations of graphic shapes; an oneiric picnic outing; a psychedelic study inspired by a Robert Desnos poem; and the Villa Noailles, a modernist villa designed by the great architect and designer Mallet-Stevens. Rife with hidden meaning and surrealist sensuality, the films are given an extra sensory and perceptual altering by the band’s ambient loops and Moog synths, which may induce a psilocybin-like experience. No drugs required! – Andréa Picard

Playing as part of this programme:

Return to Reason (1923)

Emak-Bakia (1926)

L’Étoile de mer (1928)

Les Mystères du château de Dé (1929)

The restoration process was led by Womanray and Cinenovo sourcing original prints from various parts of the world, in partnership with La Cinémathèque française, the Centre Pompidou, the Library of Congress, the French CNC and Cineteca di Bologna. 

Check out the TIFF Bell Lightbox site for more info. Watch the trailer below.