Return to Reason on Apr 26, 2025 | UCSB Arts & Lectures

The four films Man Ray directed between 1923 and 1929, Le Retour à la raison, Emak-Bakia, L'Étoile de mer and Les Mystères du Château du Dé represent a high watermark of early European avant-garde cinema. In these films Ray began discovering the limitless possibilities of montage as well as the direct application onto celluloid of objects such as salt and thumbtacks to uncover subconscious correspondences among seemingly incongruous materials and figures. In celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Le Retour à la raison, the Jim Jarmusch/Carter Logan combo SQÜRL present Man Ray: Return to Reason with a newly-recorded drone rock soundtrack. The band’s cosmic sounds complement Ray’s work by conjuring the beautiful, ineffable, haunting and sublime. (Man Ray, 2023, 70 min.)