The Starfish
Dadaist Man Ray’s The Starfish depicts a young couple, played by French model Alice Prin and André de la Riviere. Almost all of the scenes are shot either off a mirror, or through what appears to be diffused and textured glass. Ray used a gelatine dry-plate process to achieve the effect of textured glass and render the spectral images of the film like a drawing or rudimentary painting.
Like Ray’s other short films Emak-Bakia (1926), Le Retour à la raison (1923) and Les Mystères du château (1929), L’étoile de mer was restored in 4K. In 2023, Jim Jarmush and Carter Logan, founders of the band Sqürl, composed a soundtrack for these four films as if they were one.
This anthology film celebrates the centennial of Man Ray’s cinematic work. It also reveals the little-known dialogue between two multidisciplinary artists and composes a visual musical piece that touches on its modernity and poetry. The four short films will be screened as part of the FOMU expo “Lee Miller in Print.”