The Century of an Eyesplice

My graphic score to the scenes and events in Un Chien Andalou.





On February 22 of 2000, Luis Bunuel's 100th birthday, we presented "The Century of an Eyesplice" at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, under the curatorial guidance of Kathy Geritz. A newly restored print of Un Chien Andalou by the Eastman House was screened, along with Simon of the Desert, Viridiana, and a tattered print of Chien Andalou with a soundtrack I created for the occasion. We had a cake made to look like the "diagonal box" and Eric Gergis played the accordeon. David Larcher was in town and we had martinis afterwards at a bar across the street.

The soundtrack was composed from various sources, many olde records, in recognition of LB's original soundtrack using 78rpm records of Wagner and tangos. I hired Gibbs Chapman to help me cut the audio; he taught me to use ProTools. The basic soundtrack was transferred to 16mm magnetic stock and played on an interlock projector at each of three major presentations of the piece. I acquired the interlock machine and a Westrex mag recorder at Palmer Films liquidation sale just months before. I also acquired a print of Chien Andalou from a liquidation sale at distributor Budget Films. Film was liquidating.

The first screening of the new soundtrack was in Berkeley on Bunuel's birthday. I used a contact microphone to amplify tabletop objects as another layer of sound on top of the basic "bed" tracks. The film seemed to me to be about the terror of household objects. The razor is the first "wild object" of the film. Sound effects of cutlery were slowed down to sound like swordblades as Luis sharpens his razor. Or perhaps it was a recording of fencing. The slice or eye-splice is a burst of piercing controlled feedback.

The man rides a bike, his goofy musical theme sampled from a music box toy (It's a Small World After All). The man is a wind up toy himself, and the same winding key might open the absurd box he wears around his neck. The bicycle is also imitated by rolling a squeaky wheel on the contact board, a piece of wood with piezo disc contact microphone attached. Staples in the wood are plucked to approximate ant-legs, running in and out of a hole in the man's hand. This image, from Dali's dreams, is so contemporary; I think of it often as I watch young people stare into their palms, consumed by smartphones. A nylon wire (fishing line? kite string? raquet string?) was stretched when the woman grabs a tennis racket to fight the man off. An antique vocal madrigal is played to accompany the dragging of the donkey-skinned pianos, a religious procession. Hundreds of vinyl pops were digitally erased from that recording.

The second screening was a week later at The Blinding Light in Vancouver. Alex MacKenzie built an entire Surreal City series around the event. And the third screening was at ATA in San Francisco, where I used firecrackers during the gunfire scene; they were exploded in a box at the top of the stairs and their realism surprised even me.

The man falls into his field, onto the back of a statuesque female nude which disappears and he is carried off by some passers by--the don of this parkland and his garden workers. A beautiful propellar plane engine sound accompanies the fade to black. A door opens and the woman enters to stare down the death-head moth on the wall. I found an exquisite, sparse loop sample from an old record which fits the black and white film emulsion here like a glove. And then a chopstick was vibrated along the edge of the soundboard; it flutters like large insect wings. I sometimes sampled that and slowed it down to great effect.

There is a scene in which the second man (the Challenger?) comes to the house, rings the doorbell (actual martini shaker with ice recorded and mixed with bells), he is let in and when he enters the room I used live radio to accompany his actions. At the Berkeley screening the radio insert found a BBC news voice saying: "Mad cow disease", which was in the news at the time.

I continued to work on the soundtrack and sent a few copies out on VHS. I tried to create an alternate version of the film but got bogged down. Only recently have I gotten around to remixing the piece for web presentation. Please view it here.

Un Perro Andaluz, 80 Anos Despues

2009 was the 80th anniversary of the Bunuel/Dali film UN CHIEN ANDALOU, known in Spain as Un Perro Andaluz, and recognized today as a universal surrealist masterpiece. Although made in France, the film is in many ways a Spanish import, as Bunuel moved between Spain and Paris, writing the scenario from their dreams at Dali's home in Cadaques. Bunuel made the film with his mother's generous gift from her savings, her escudos, the nickel coins with a shield on the back. Bunuel premiered the film in Paris equipped with stones in his pockets to repel attackers. The 80th anniversary found the Tabakalera center in San Sebastian working with the Filmoteca Nacional on an exhibition and symposium to discuss the film's history and present a film restoration made from the original film materials. See here.

Maybe a year ago, I stumbled across a BFI blog where film enthusiasts and archivists were discussing recent dvd and blu-ray releases. The BFI had produced a dvd of L'Age d'Or which included Un Chien Andalou in the set, and somebody offered the information about the Spanish restoration project. I have been looking to import this book+dvd for at least the past 9 months. The set is a catalog for the exhibit which opened in San Sebastian and visited a few other Spanish cities. The restored film is online and looks gorgeous in the small frame. I had a new Holy Grail: finding a hard copy of this restored film. I looked online at bookstores in Spain and Spanish amazon, the European amazons and asked European friends. It is still difficult to import a rare book, even with the internet. The cost, 30 or $40 on the street in Spain, would probably approach $100 from a large bookstore, with shipping and import fees. I decided to wait and see if it would turn up via some American distributor or museum store. Every few months I remembered to look into it. This summer (2013), I called Schoenhof's in Cambridge, probably the biggest importer of foreign books in the US, where I had bought many Spanish books during my years in Boston, and asked them about ordering it; still around $100. Then I checked ABEbooks, the consortium of independent booksellers online, and someone in the US appeared to have a copy of the set: the 2 book volumes, 46-page Basque summary and the dvd of the restored film--the complete edition, at $65 + $10 shipping. On further inquiry, shipping would be an additional $8.70, bringing the total to $83.70. Still not cheap, this seemed a fair price for something I had been searching for so long. It arrived only a few days later. It is another classic piece for a Bunuel collector, a hardboard case holding 2 books and the film. I have an entire large bag filled with books on and by Bunuel. I have a multi-region dvd player. The last incredible film find was when I discovered that Hollis Frampton's films were out on a Criterion dvd. It was an incredible year for film. Don't ask me to borrow either of those dvds.