Emak-Bakia

Man Ray's second film — subtitled a "cinépoème" — is sixteen minutes of Dadaist visual play that defies description and resists interpretation with gleeful determination. Spinning objects create moiré patterns, a woman's eyes are painted on closed eyelids, sheep drift through fields like clouds, car headlights streak through darkness, and none of it adds up to anything except pure visual pleasure. Ray, already one of the great photographers and visual artists of the twentieth century, approaches cinema with a sculptor's eye and a prankster's heart, creating images that are simultaneously beautiful and absurd. The title — Basque for "leave me alone" — is the perfect epigraph for a film that wants nothing from you except that you watch. A hypnotic, playful, and utterly free piece of visual art.