SURREALIST FILM. Un Chien Andalou. "Un Chien Andalou " (1928) is a collaboration between film director Luis Bunuel and the Surrealist Salvador Dali. As Bunuel describes it in his autobiography: "It came from an encounter between two dreams." And much like dreams, it is loaded with a sense of metaphor. The screenplay, with non-linear time and a hyper-symbolic quality to every image, propels the viewer deep into this non-functional world of his plot-less film in order to deliver a visceral experience of the concepts at hand.
The famous scene of the eye being sliced is memorable in the gut reaction it provokes. It has been interpreted as a statement on how the viewer must use another set of eyes to understand this film. The device of provoking physical discomfort in the viewer has been since then explored by many artists in their practices. It has been written about extensively by art critic Julia Kristeva under the denomination of "abjection" or "abject art."
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