RETURN TO REASON © Man Ray 2015 Trust / ADAGP, Paris 2023
Jim Jarmusch and Logan Carter set Man Ray to music
When Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan, founders of the alternative rock group Sqürl, encounter Man Ray. In Return to Reason, screened at Cannes Classics in their presence, the New York duo puts into music four short films in a row from the surrealist photographer to celebrate the centenary of his work.
After their collaboration on the feature film Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), selected at Cannes in 2013, Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan are bacck with a musical cinematographic project in the form of a sonic exlporation.
The American director and producer have reformed their duo, Sqürl, to take on Man Ray’s cinematic work. Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan have imagined the music of four of the photographer’s silent films: Le Retour à la raison (1923, 19 minutes), Emak Bakia (Leave Me Alone, 1926, 19 minutes), L‘Étoile de mer (The Starfish) (1928, 17 minutes) andLes Mystères du château de dé (1929, 25 minutes).
The group brought together the four films as a single and unique artistic object and developed a semi-improvised score that relies on loops, synthesizers and effected guitars, in a vein that is deeply experimental, to create a visual, sonic and musical shock. The result also reveals an original dialogue between two multi-disciplinary artists and forms an unidentified object, a visual music that is affecting through its modernity and its poetry.
Produced by Womanray (Marieke Tricoire) and Cinenovo (Julie Viez). Films directed by Man Ray. Music composed and performed by Sqürl (Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan).
