Invocations and Evocations: Queer and Surreal

Friday 26 March – Monday 29 March 2010

Surrealism began as a brotherhood experimenting with trance states, games of chance and research into the world of the marvellous. One of their games was the act of invocation – calling forth forgotten or buried figures: famous or notorious. Although the surrealists’ social politics initially included a virulent strain of homophobia, the thread woven by André Breton and his peers can be followed into the labyrinth of queer practice throughout the twentieth century and beyond.

This special series of screenings and discussions will provide a form of invocation where the tangled threads of the surrealist project and those of queer experimental cinema, exemplified by Kenneth Anger, Maya Deren, Derek Jarman and many others, will be reflected from the projector’s blinding beam.

  Film