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"Brendan, this is what the world looks like all the time to me. Just a little fog. It’s a fine day for boating on the Great Lakes.” Without missing a stroke he turned to dart a skeptical glance at me. Brendan the Navigator. When we named him I didn’t tell his mother everything the legendary Irish name implied. But I imagined him taking on the role of navigator for me. Growing up with Coastal Survey charts and tales of Great Lakes shipwrecks, he came to know Superior as another home. He never doubted the wisdom of canoeing there with a father who was half blind. ![President George H.W. Bush signs into law the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on July 26, 1990 as Justin Dart looks on. [Source: ucp.org]](http://fairuselab.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/ada_signing_072690_ucp_2.jpg "ada_signing_072690_ucp_2")
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If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in 
The legendary Kiki of Montparnasse posed for Man Ray’s 
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January 2, 2010 at 8:15pm
by Mark Willis 
Kiki of Montparnasse in Man Ray’s 1926 silent film “Emak-Bakia” [Photo source: Stills, a blog with the descriptor, “I Watch, I Screen-Cap, You Look” – I love it!]
When Man Ray’s short film “Emak-Bakia” debuted in Paris in 1926, critical opinion was mixed. One angry viewer shouted that it gave him a headache and hurt his eyes, to which another retorted, “Shut up!” A brawl ensued, which spread through the audience and spilled into the street. Then the police arrived to quell the riot.
The story comes from the film’s Wikipedia entry. It may be apocryphal, but it fits a long tradition of Paris art openings. Ray’s experimentation with abstract elements, surrealist motives, and stop-motion animation was avant-garde at the time. It earned his place in the French film movement known as Cinéma Pur. Today’s film critics, sated by special effects, just yawn. According to Chris Dashiell in a 2001 review in CineScene.com:
EMAK BAKIA (1926) displays the influence of both surrealism and dadaism. Once again Ray experiments with the movement of shapes – many of the effects seem tired now after decades of innovation in animated film, but they were fresh at the time. He employs bizarre imagery as well – a man’s eyes turning into the headlights of a car, a flock of sheep, the legs of a dancing woman. Odd effects are attained through camera movement – sideways, upside down, etc. – or distortion of the image, as in a convex mirror.
Emak bakia means “leave me alone” in Basque, although an alternate idiomatic meaning is “the female [gives] the peace.” The legendary Kiki of Montparnasse, Ray’s model and mistress, drives a car in the film. Doomed Dada poet Jacques Rigaut appears dressed in drag.
The film was silent in its original cut. The version shown here comes from a video produced by the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (via Ubu.com, which hosts five other Man Ray shorts). The soundtrack was mixed with music from Ray’s personal record collection.
Thanks to The Drifter and the Gypsy for linking to my post on Man Ray’s Surrealist Muse (a photo portrait of Lee Miller) and thus pointing me to “Emak Bakia” (albeit a version with a New Age soundtrack; see parts 1 & 2).
3 Comments
#1. Shed A Tear For The Subversion of Images… and Hackneyed Colonialism – a blind flaneur 01.08.2010
[...] admit it. When I compared Man Ray’s “Emak-Bakia” to Avatar the other day, I was listening to the crasser angels of search engine optimization. You know, the [...]
#2. Lichanos 06.22.2010
I saw this film as a high school student in the 1970s – thanks for reminding me of it!
I must admit, I didn’t get your post title at first. I thought you were asking if the film had been the ‘forerunner’ or something of the 1920s. I forgot that there was a current film, “Avatar,” although I did see it: http://iamyouasheisme.wordpress.com/2009/12/26/avatar/
I can’t see any relationship between the two. Ray was imaginative, creative, innovative, and weird. “Avatar” is technologically advanced (3-D) but otherwise mind-numbing in its conventionality. My opinion anyway…
#3. Mark Willis 06.22.2010
I agree with you, Lichanos. Man Ray is one of my tutelary spirits, and “Avatar” means nothing to me, really. I think I included that reference as a cheap throw-away because the media was saturated with “Avatar” stories at the time. What I meant to convey was how Man Ray’s films represented the state of the art in special effects in the 1920s. Thanks for checking in!
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