Étude cinégraphique sur une arabesque
Germaine Dulac (France, 1929, 7'13)

A purely visual exploration of dance movement, in which Dulac translates the rhythm and form of an arabesque into images through superimpositions, slow motion and abstract editing. One of the most refined examples of her pursuit of "pure cinema" and integral cinema.

The Seashell and the Clergyman (La Coquille et le Clergyman)
Germaine Dulac, screenplay by Antonin Artaud (France, 1928, 40')

The erotic hallucinations of a clergyman obsessed with a general's wife, unfolding in a sequence of dreamlike and symbolic images. Released a year before Un chien andalou, it is widely regarded as the first surrealist film in cinema history.

La guerra e il sogno di Momi (The War and the Dream of Momi)
Segundo de Chomón (Italy, 1917, 37')

Young Momi waits at home for his father, who has gone to war. One evening he falls asleep on the sofa and his favourite toys, Trik and Trak, come to life, setting off a surreal miniature military escalation. A stop-motion masterpiece by special effects wizard Segundo de Chomón, presented here with an original score by Fabio Sodano, Fabio Costantino, Maurizio Salemi e Michele Catania — a kaleidoscopic and psychedelic collage drawing from Futurism, 8-bit video games, and songs from the Great War front.

A Page of Madness (Kurutta Ichipeiji)
Teinosuke Kinugasa (Japan, 1926, 70')

Set in an asylum, the film follows a former sailor who takes a job as an orderly in order to stay close to his institutionalised wife. With no intertitles, it was originally screened with live narration by benshi storytellers; believed lost for 45 years, it was rediscovered by Kinugasa himself in 1971.

Entr'acte
René Clair (France, 1924, 27')

Conceived as an intermission piece for Francis Picabia's Dadaist ballet Relâche, with music by Erik Satie, it unfolds as a succession of absurd and playful images — a cannon, a funeral chased by a camel, a rooftop chess game between Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray — exploring the pure language of montage.

Ballet Mécanique
Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy (France, 1924, 16')

A "ballet" of everyday objects, gears and fragments of human bodies assembled with obsessive rhythm: a manifesto of Cubism applied to cinema, signed by painter Fernand Léger.

Ménilmontant
Dimitri Kirsanoff (France, 1926, 38')

Two orphaned sisters move to the Parisian neighbourhood of Ménilmontant following the murder of their parents. Shot without a single intertitle, it stands as a pinnacle of Impressionist editing, blending superimpositions and rapid cuts to convey inner emotional states.

Limite
Mário Peixoto (Brazil, 1931, 120')

Three castaways adrift on a boat relive in flashback the events that led them there. The only completed film by writer Mário Peixoto, inspired by a photograph by André Kertész, it is regarded as one of the absolute masterpieces of South American silent cinema.