Anemic cinema

Duration: 6

Genre: Short

Year Published: 1926

Creator: Images Film Archive

Format: 16mm

Color: B&W

Sound: silent

Description: Marcel Duchamp's only film is an example of graphic cinema. It wittingly demonstrates the intertwining of the visual and verbal responses to viewing a film. The title itself- anemic is an anagram of cinema. Disks of spirals which create optical illusions alternate with disks containing elaborately obscene puns. Duchamp condenses the whole range of sexual elements involving emergence and penetration of a plane surface into a model association between the illusions of gyrating cones and the allusions to breasts, genitals and defecation., The film depicts whirling animated drawings – which Duchamp called Rotoreliefs – alternated with puns in French. The text, which spirals in a counterclockwise motion suggests a set up of erotic scenarios. Early experimental film.

Complete Record: Marcel Duchamp's only film is an example of graphic cinema. It wittingly demonstrates the intertwining of the visual and verbal responses to viewing a film. The title itself- anemic is an anagram of cinema. Disks of spirals which create optical illusions alternate with disks containing elaborately obscene puns. Duchamp condenses the whole range of sexual elements involving emergence and penetration of a plane surface into a model association between the illusions of gyrating cones and the allusions to breasts, genitals and defecation. , , NOTE: Two (or more) records have been merged together to create this data.