Kindness Week (Max Ernst)

Max Ernst was one of the young men who returned from the 1914-18 war ready to reject all the standards and customs which society had hitherto taken for granted. If culture and religion had led to nothing better than the past four years of misery and horror, they argued, then it was time to give anarchy and unreason a chance. This film is about the series of 182 collage engravings which illustrate Ernst's irrational novel Kindness Week, divided into seven sequences which each represent a day of the week. By animating these fantasy engravings on film, the artist was able to bring yet another absurd element to his protest against reason. The quality of the animation is superb, and the entire film was personally approved by Max Ernst.

'Here the surrealist climate is recreated. High spirits and non-conformism are taken to the limits of the fantastic and of plastic inventiveness.' UNESCO

Biographical details about Max Ernst