Salvador Dalí

The High Museum of Art will present the film series “Dalí: A Passion for Film” from Saturday, August 21, through Saturday, September 11. Featuring films and shorts that showcase Dalí’s fascination with cinema, the series will celebrate the artist’s influence on prolific filmmakers from Walt Disney to Alfred Hitchcock. This series is presented in coordination with “Salvador Dalí: The Late Work,” on display at the High from August 7, 2010, through January 9, 2011.

“Salvador Dalí had a life-long passion for film, both as a viewer and as a creator. Many of the 20 film projects that he pursued were never realized, but the barriers to their completion never diminished his enthusiasm or imagination,” said Linda Dubler, curator of media arts at the High. “Films at the High will present a season of films beginning in August devoted to Dalí’s own creations to the filmmakers who inspired him to his on-screen persona as an artist and a celebrity. With guest speakers such as the exhibition’s curator Elliott King and a festival of fantasy and the surreal in November that focuses on the influence of Surrealism in cinema, this promises to be an eye-opening program of interest to art and film lovers alike.”

The festival opens on Saturday, August 21, with “Dalí the Filmmaker,” featuring a talk and screening with Elliott King, guest curator of “Salvador Dalí: The Late Work” and author of Dalí, Surrealism and Cinema. King will explore Dalí’s interest in the movies and his influence on classic filmmakers such as Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock. Films to be screened include Dalí and Bunuel’s short “An Andalusian Dog,” the restored short of Salvador Dalí and Walt Disney’s collaboration “Destino” and the Dalí-designed dream sequence from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound.”

On Saturday, August 28, “Dalí’s American Friends” presents Dalí’s admiration of both Walt Disney and Harpo Marx as American Surrealists. In Walt Disney’s classic animated short “Skeleton Dance,” four skeletons dance in various ways and play makeshift musical instruments in a spooky graveyard. The feature-length Marx Brothers’ 1933 classic “Duck Soup” is a Surrealist work and cinematic achievement. Critic Roger Ebert said of the comedy, “To describe the plot [of Duck Soup] would be an exercise in futility, since a Marx Brothers movie exists in moments, bits, sequences, business and dialogue, not in comprehensible stories.”

The Dalí film festival concludes on Saturday, September 11, with “Lights, Camera, Dalí.” This series of three shorts looks at Dalí as a celebrity and an on-screen personality. Shot in New York, Jack Bond’s “Dalí in New York,” Andy Warhol’s “Dalí Screen Tests” and Jonas Mekas’s “New York Encounters with Dalí” explore Dalí’s surreal universe and cinematic fascination.