André Breton DVD

Also on Ionarts: Drinking New Wine (April 28, 2005) Chez André Breton (April 20, 2005) Louis Aragon (April 24, 2004) Destino (February 26, 2004) Sale of Surrealist Books and Artifacts (January 25, 2004)

André Breton, the self-proclaimed Pope of Surrealism, lived in an apartment at 42, rue Fontaine, in Paris. What was his place like? A little article (André Breton, images de la rue Fontaine, December 30) in Le Figaro describes one way to find out, a DVD about the writer and his apartment (my translation):

We still remember the prestigious auctions that took place in 2003 in Paris. We remember that the sale was painful for those who dreamed of keeping the objects together. But 42, rue Fontaine has not disappeared completely. There are films that still give witness to it. In effect, the poet's daughter, Aube Elléouët-Breton, decided to open to the public the door of that mythical place by allowing the production of three films now brought together on DVD. As she puts it, "What the Rue Fontaine was, where I lived out my childhood, I did not want to see that disappear."

L'Oeil à l'état sauvage was filmed in Breton's apartment in 1994, kept exactly as he left it. André Breton malgré tout is a sort of catalogue of the objects Breton kept there. Finally, the last short film documents the sale of Breton's extraordinary collection of belongings at the Hôtel Drouot. The DVD, André Breton Forever, by Fabrice Maze and Jean-Michel Goutier, is available from Editions Seven Doc. The famous wall of artifacts that Breton kept in his apartment is now on view in the Centre Pompidou. For more information and images, see the remarkable Atelier André Breton Web site.