Marcel Duchamp reads you bedtime stories from hell. You will not sleep.
Free-associative images are juxtaposed with disorienting poetry in Richter's late work. The film is visual dynamite: Upside-down and reversed footage, play with shadows and light, billiards and dice and balloons-- suggestive and surreal images. Tenets of Dada writing, such as games of chance, punnery, wordplay and loud nonsense noise are foist upon the viewer as Dada poems are read / performed by their orignal authors.
Editing
Upside-down billiards that somehow makes perfect nonsense
Sound
Dada legends performing their own anarchic poetry
Direction
Richter weaponizing 40 years of avant-garde experience
Director
Hans Richter
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Richter assembled actual Dada royalty for this—Arp, Duchamp, and Hausmann hadn't performed together since the 1920s Cabaret Voltaire days.
This was Richter's cinematic swan song at age 74, essentially a retirement party where he burned down everything he'd learned about film grammar.
US
