I'm looking for some films that use lots of surreal ideas, imagery and the like because I love surrealism but never seem to find anything surreal in any form of medium other than art (Dali and such)
If you're gonna reccomend, just don't mention David Lynch, I have loads of his stuff already (just need to get Lost Highway and Eraserhead)
You know Dali dabbled in film, right? He worked on Un Chien Andalou (The Andalusian Dog) with Luis Bunuel. Both of those guys, and many other surrealists were contemporaries of folks like Andre Bazin who later founded "Cahiers du Cinema" and redefined the way we examine films. There's definitely a historical, if not natural connection between surrealist art and cinema.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahiers_du_cinéma
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020530/
In fact, if you want to watch surrealist films, Bunuel is a great starting point. Particularly his earlier stuff, like L'Age D'Or.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000320/
Along with Dali, Bunuel was the center of a major surrealist cinema movement in Europe in the late 20s and early 30s. Tons of stuff there for you to seek out if you haven't seen it already.
Max Ophuls dabbles slightly in surrealism, but not strictly a surrealist. "La Ronde" is worth the watch though as he treats the audience/film relationship with an interesting and slightly surreal approach.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0649097/
Hope that helps.
And where ever did we put that thread where folks were against studying film history?
One might notice that there is a direct line between the surrealists of the 20s and 30s and the French New Wave that comes later. Goddard and Truffaut were writers for Cahiers, and students of Bazin's who was a contemporary of Dali, Bunuel, Earnst, and so on. Well, maybe not Earnst, can't recall if he was in that part of Europe at the time.
) so I guess that made me love it more.
