This weekend the Ruya Shop is screening Fernand Léger’s avant-garde film Ballet Mécanique (1924).
Location: Mutanabbi Street, Baghdad
Time: 10am – 2pm
Date: Friday 4 May – Saturday 5 May
Ballet Mechanique reflects the modernist fascination with industrialisation, and concerns about the mechanisation of everyday life. The film is directed by French Surrealist artist Fernand Léger, who collaborated with the American photographer and filmmaker Dudley Murphey. Mundane household objects, mechanised kitchen appliances and human limbs appear throughout the film, and a woman carries a heavy sack on her shoulder, condemned like Sisyphus to climb and re-climb a steep flight of stairs on a Paris street. The montage draws on movement, repetition, juxtaposition, layering and kaleidoscope effect to create a rhythmic dance or performance.