Kinastasia Review – A treasure trove of early cinema’s visions and the dream lives they contain | film

touis Buñuel wrote that dreams were the first cinema. His short film Un Chien Andalou, co-written with Salvador Dali and inspired by their dreams, is nearly 100 years old, but its images still have the power to shock and disturb: a razor blade slicing an eyeball; Two rotting asses tied to a grand piano.

Un Chien Andalou is one of dozens in this documentary about the influence of dreams in early cinema. The film is directed by Gerald Fox, based on an essay by Vlada Petrić, the late Harvard film studies professor, which explains a theory that early moviegoers used brain-stimulating techniques much like dreams. In the nicest way possible, the documentary itself feels like a film school lecture, erudite and comprehensive. The professional editing of the clips conveys the shock of the new that audiences in the 1910s and 1920s felt as they watched the double exposure used to create a ghost-like vision of the victim in the tortured mind of his killer in D. W. Griffith’s “Avenging Conscience.” Or Charlie Chaplin turning into a chicken in the eyes of a man delirious with hunger in The Gold Rush.

From the German Expressionists F. W. Murnau and Fritz Lang to the Soviets Sergei Eisenstein and Oleksandr Dovzhenko, Kineticism is essentially one of the greatest works of early experimental cinema. I had never heard of Japanese director Tennosuke Kinugasa or his wonderful 1926 film The Page of Madness, set in a psychiatric hospital; He was long thought to be missing and was found years later in a sake barrel. Perhaps in recognition of the heavy male work in early cinema, there is a section dedicated to the brilliance of pioneering film director Maya Deren. Fox’s narration is a simple touch, and the dramatic sequences featuring Serbian actor Goran Kostic as Professor Petric add very little. However, it is required viewing for anyone interested in cinema history.