The exhaustive lunacy of getting a film produced can take a monstrous toll on its creators, sometimes in ways unimaginable to the human and/or animated brain. Spiraling yet powerful forces of idiot-wind can fling the Creator back and forth towards fractured states of mind, tortured shards of creative anxiety that once welded back together reveal the knotty shapes of Cinema -  and whether these anxieties take the form of Godard and a group of passengers on a plane nose-diving straight into Desolation Row or Brendan Fraser sharing a ride with an exasperated Joe Dante (in the form of Daffy Duck), an artist crying out for their deserved recognition, is a journey only to be taken by you, the viewer. Godard once described his film as “the camera versus landscapes over 17 rounds,” a description signaling the combative marriage between the comedic and the experimental, something Dante similarly achieves with 3x the budget and 4x the headache. Both display their creators’ love of citation: whether they are citing 19th century Russian literature or 1950’s science fiction films, these films could not be anymore than the work of the same looney, conjoined minds that gave us the 4 hour cinematic essays Histoire(s) du Cinéma (1988) and The Movie Orgy (1968). The leviathan of Industry will always stand in the face of anything with two working legs, but for characters searching for existential balance or a diamond McGuffin, they will find their own madcap energies taking on kaleidoscopic proportions, extending their imaginations across the canvasses of the Louvre (at 2x the speed of Band of Outsiders) and beyond the crooked landscapes of modern France, where the human beings resemble figures closer to those drawn up by the clenched fists of WB’s Merrie Melodies division.

SCREENING ORDER

11/15 - KEEP YOUR RIGHT UP + LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION