From Surrealism to New Queer Cinema

oneiric experimentalism set against sexual repression

Abstract

Extending from literature to photography and the plastic arts and, later, to cinema, Surrealism revolutionized the classical language of the arts in a striking way. In fact, as it is known, since the dawn of the last century, the movement introduced its unique editing methods and its own philosophy into the narrative structures of these different aesthetic domains, in recognition of the manifestations of the unconscious. In light of this, the aim of the present article is not only to re-present the movement in its connection with psychoanalysis, but to draw upon the psychoanalytic revolution itself, with its theorization of sexual ambiguity, so as to examine the issue of genders and sexual positions within a cinematography that is risky but nonetheless marked by male signature and cisheteronormativity.