Impressions de la Haute Mongolie (Impressions of Upper Mongolia)
Salvador Dalí
20/02/2019 | 9 pm | Attending Bodo Kessler | Introduction M+M
Preceded by UN CHIEN ANDALOU (An Andalusian Dog)
Filmmuseum München | Tickets 089 / 23 39 64 50
A rare pearl of a very special kind presents the series “‘Cinema Dreams in Artists Cinema”: “Impressions of Upper Mongolia” has been conceived in 1976 by the surrealist and eccentric Salvador Dalí for the TV station WDR. It is about an imaginary trip in search of a hallified mushroom, told with a range of surrealistic video effects.
A special highlight of the evening organized by KINO DER KUNST: The Munich artist duo M+M, responsible for the introduction of the program, succeeded in locating the cameraman of the film realized jointly by Salvador Dalí and WDR director José Montes-Baquer. Bodo Kessler, who also worked with Rebecca Horn, Nam June Paik and Volker Schlöndorff, tells the story of the genesis of the project, from the first meeting with Dalí and Frau Gala in New York to the shooting in her house in Cadaques, Spain.
Impressions de la Haute Mongolie | BRD 1976 | D: José Montes-Baquer | B: Salvador Dalí | DOP: Bodo Kessler, Manfred Kage | M: Ingfried Hoffmann | 57 min | French OV with German subtitles
“Salvador Dalí and his fellow surrealists owed a great debt to the wealthy, dandyish French writer Raymond Roussel, as much as modernist poets owed the Symbolist Jules Laforgue. But like Laforgue, Roussel is much more often referenced than read, and he isn’t referenced often. A hermetic, insular writer who seems to belong to a private world almost entirely his own, Roussel despaired of his lack of success and committed suicide in 1933. His aesthetic progeny, on the other hand— Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, André Breton—were showmen, self-promoters and media geniuses. So it’s particularly poignant, in the quirkiest of ways, that Dalí chose for his final film project a collaboration with Jose Montes Baquer in 1976 called “Impressions of Upper Mongolia” (“Impressions de la haute Mongolie”—above with English subtitles), an homage to Roussel’s self-published 1910 novel Impressions of Africa.
Roussel, who traveled widely, never traveled to Africa, and his “impressions” are wholly creations of the kind of wordplay that Dalí made visual in his painting (including a canvas with Roussel’s title). Like Roussel’s novel, Impressions of Upper Mongolia is a surrealist fantasy with only the most tenuous connection to its ostensible geographical subject.” (openculture.com)
Preceded by:
Un Chien andalou | France 1929 | D: Luis Buñuel | B: Luis Buñuel, SalvadorDalí | DOP: Albert Duverger | C: Simone Mareuil, Pierre Batcheff, Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí | 16 min | OV with Engl. Subtitles
“Un Chien Andalou made quite the stir upon its release. It was presented first at an invitation only-session at the Studio des Ursulines art house on June 6, 1929. It had its public release at Montmartre’s Studio 28 on October 1st. While not officially part of the Surrealist movement until after the film had shown, Dali and Bunuel’s film was quickly adopted by the group as part of their aesthetic repertoire.” (wherethelongtailends.com)