This weekend the Ruya Shop is screening Germaine du Lac’s film La Coquille et le Clergyman (1928).
Location: Mutanabbi Street, Baghdad
Time: 10am – 2pm
Date: Friday 21 Dec – Saturday 22 Dec
Some historians consider Germaine Dulac’s La Coquille et le Clergyman (The Seashell and the Clergyman) to be the first surrealist film ever made. The film focuses on the erotic hallucinations of a priest who covets another man’s wife. Dulac adapted a script by the French dramaturgist Antonin Artaud, who was Dulac’s contemporary. The film caused outrage and a riot at its first screening to an audience of surrealist artists and bohemians in Paris. Artaud and other artists were critical of the female film director. Today, La Coquille et le Clergyman is admired for its innovative camerawork and engagement with gender politics.