A landmark of early experimental film, ‘The Blood of a Poet’ imagines the plight of an artist embarking upon creation, their journey woven through Surrealism’s magnificent tapestry and captured within a cinema of totalising affect. Tracing the connective tissue between art, sacrifice, and the weight of violence upon a shared consciousness, Cocteau crafts the syntax of subconscious feeling that would come to define the rest of 'The Orphic Trilogy'. Arresting portraits of the inexpressible, vistas of oneiric quality, and vignettes of the repressed bursting forth all collate in wondrous montage, concretising the words of its creator: “Poets . . . shed not only the red blood of their hearts but the white blood of their souls,”.

The event consists of two parts, with the film being played twice. The first screening will feature a live score by Blood Niece (Clare Spollen, James M. Creed), followed by a second screening where you, the audience, will participate to create a new soundtrack.

DIRECTED BY Jean Cocteau
France
English Intertitles
1932
55 MINS
18

Presented for Scalarama by Good Boys Film Club @goodboysleeds
PAYF