Michael Gould

Welcome

Michael Gould’s Surrealism and the Cinema: Open-eyed Screening was one of the first English-language books on this subject. Evolving from his university film studies with film scholar Jay Leyda, it sought to break new ground in writing on film. Since then the author has been writing poetry and (his guilty pleasure) keeping lists of imaginary absurdist book titles. The best of these titles can be found in Aardvarks after Dark.

When the original Surrealists – the real Surrealists – roamed Earth in the early decades of last century, only the cognoscenti knew what they were talking and squawking about. Later, bourgeois arty types (like Gould) got hold of, and promoted, the concepts of Surrealism; an arcane sensibility, it remained a sub-culture. In today’s crazy world we virtually eat surrealism for breakfast.