Sixi Screening
A Surrealist Classic Film Trilogy
Event Date
September 21, Saturday, 2025
Guest
Chen Yue
(Nanjing Southeast University)
Event Review
On September 21st, Sixi Museum hosted a film screening event, basing on the theme of the current duo exhibition. The event invited Professor Chen Yue from the School of Art at Southeast University, who guided the audience through a systematic review of the evolution of European avant-garde cinema from its infancy to its prime in the early 20th century. From the dual perspectives of film and art, the audience gained an understanding of the artistic concepts and techniques embodied in surrealism.
This event cleverly connected the inherent links between three films to weave together a cinematic revolution that progressed from Dadaism to Expressionism and finally to Surrealism. It took The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari—the pioneering work of German Expressionist cinema—as the "prelude" for exploration. During the pre-screening introduction session, Professor Chen Yue linked Expressionist art with Expressionist film, prompting the audience to pay attention to its entirely hand-painted distorted sets and stylized light and shadow. These visual elements exaggeratedly externalized the characters' inner worlds, opening the door for cinema to explore subjective psychological spaces.
After the screening, Professor Chen Yue selected memorable clips from the films to analyze how they expressed their respective artistic propositions. Although these films are "not beautiful" or "uncomfortable" to watch, it is precisely through this sense of discomfort that the directors urged the audience to face their inner desires and subconsciousness squarely. In the Q&A session, Professor Chen Yue also addressed the issue of metaphor interpretation. Taking the unconscious as its central thread, surrealist cinema avoids interpreting scenes from a rational perspective, so there are no standard answers to the interpretation of metaphors.