In Basque “Emak Bakia” means “Leave me alone” (but also "the female (gives) the peace"), and while this sentence currently reflects my personal state of mind, today’s post actually refers to a 1926 film by surrealist and dadaist Man Ray.
I have analysed the power of filmic distortions in previous posts on this site, but Emak-Bakia includes also further inspiring experimental filming technques.
Considered as a “cinepoem”, Emak-Bakia is a collection of film fragments, segments showing whirling objects by Man Ray, sculptures by Picasso, blurred body parts and abstract inventions filmed through deforming mirrors, an electric turntable, crystals and special lamps and united by a thin “plot” featuring a car ride (even though Man Ray claimed the editing of the images was casual and there was no narrative progression, it is almost possible to detect a plot in the film that dissolves on the very moment you grasp it).
In this fantasy of pure invention made of rayograms, double exposures, superimpositions, out-of-focus animation and kaleidoscopic hypnotising movements that make the watcher dizzy, there are some exquisite glimpses of fashion such as the shot of the car driver (Rose Wheeler) wearing a pair of mask-like goggles (echoes can be traced in contemporary sunglasses such as Walter van Beirendonck View this photo and Bernhard Willhelm’s View this photo for Linda Farrow) or “le dandy dada” Jacques Rigaut tearing apart men’s shirt collars that are eventually transformed through double exposure into distorted and deformed sculpture-like shapes, rhythmically dancing and rotating in space.
An intertitle in the film claims at some point "La raison de cette extravagance" (The reason for this extravagance) but it doesn’t seem to explain much: indeed Man Ray stated about Emak-Bakia: "Its reasons for being are in its inventions of light-forms and movements, while the more objective parts interrupt the monotony of abstract inventions or serve as punctuation".
Emak Bakia remains a thought-provoking piece, a metafilmic film in which casual shots are combined with more carefully planned sequences in a collision of camera with space, while double exposure becomes an excuse to hint and symbolise a double personality or rather a multiple personality – see the multiplied close ups of women’s legs repeated to fade or Kiki de Montparnasse (Alice Prin) with a second pair of eyes painted on her eyelids awakening at the very end, no more machine, no more automaton, but woman once again (a cyclic image since the film starts with the author’s eye reflected upside-down in the camera lens), maybe a reference to the condition of the watcher spellbound and turned into an automaton by the images in the film and finally waking up from a mesmerising dream.
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