A Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dali Is A Great Documentary About A True Avant Garde Artist
I’ve posted this film, ‘A Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dali’, for two reasons, firstly it’s an extremely interestingly made documentary about a true avant garde artist and secondly because I can never get enough of Dali. He keeps me believing in the same way Hirst utterly doesn’t.
It’s not so much his work I love but his attitude, his life, his artifice, his complete absorption, his sense of spectacle. He was also a brilliant media manipulator. People were endlessly fascinated with him while the press were never sure where they stood with him, what kind of answer he was going to give, woiuld they ever find out anything about him, his life, the truth? No chance.
This brings us back to the film, a biography that was made in 1970 by French director Jean-Christophe Averty who travelled to Dalis home in Spain, the seaside village of Portlligat, to shoot this 52 minute documentary.
Orson Welles narrates the film and although there are some standard biographical elements in the documentary it’s mostly free flowing with Averty allowing Dali to dictate the surreal narrative. In other words very little information but lots of surreal moments.
Enjoy the ride…
Via Open Culture
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