From Buñuel to Warhol: Modernism in Film / In conjunction with one of the most provocative installations the Honolulu Academy of Arts has offered, the Doris Duke Theatre is presenting From Buñuel to Warhol: Modernism in Film.

“I wanted to share some seminal films that really represented that movement,” says Gina Caruso, film curator for the Doris Duke Theatre.

Some selections from the program parallel what’s physically in the exhibition, From Whistler to Warhol: Modernism on Paper. The opening film is John Huston’s Moulin Rouge and the gallery has an actual Toulouse-Lautrec on display. For those who only know Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 ode to pop music, the 1952 classic is a surprisingly relevant biopic on the seminal painter, and features a tour de force performance by José Ferrer as the artist with the stunted legs and ubiquitous bowler hat. All of it takes place in that notorious nightclub of bohemian rhapsody.

Other choices aren’t so obvious. Take the screening of Jean Cocteau’s La Belle Et La Bête (Beauty and the Beast).

“These people all worked together,” says Caruso. “Picasso worked with Cocteau. They all knew each other, hanging out in cafes in Paris, and they all worked on other projects together.”

Suffice to say, Cocteau’s groundbreaking 1946 adaptation is nothing like the Disney animated version from 1991. Surreal images of candle sconces in the walls made out of real arms, the imposing Lon Channey Jr. / Wolfman-like appearance of the Beast, and the eerie use of smoke, compete with Cocteau’s framed chiaroscuro shadows to create a haunting interpretation of the children’s fairy tale.

Also appropriately screening is Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies, Arne Glimcher’s documentary that explores the link between Cubism and film, starring Martin Scorsese, Bernice Rose, Julian Schnabel, Chuck Close, Lucas Samaras, Robert Whitman, Eric Fischl and Jennifer Wild. It will be accompanied by three other shorts: Jasper Johns: Take an Object–an examination of the artist whose work is in the exhibit; N.Y., N.Y.–about Cubist painter Francis Thompson; and Cuadro Por Cuadro (Frame by Frame)– about Uruguay artist Mark Street.

Caruso also chose Jean-Luc Godard’s 2 Ou 3 Choses Que Je Sais D’Elle (Two or Three Things I Know About Her), a challenging meditation on a housewife who leads a double-life as a prostitute. Godard offers a pensive narration on art, philosophy, materialism and politics in a not-too-long-ago era that was under constant threat of nuclear annihilation. The auteur’s work is what Caruso calls, “a direct response to pop art” evidents in scenes like one in which the camera stares directly into a coffee cup to contemplate the brown liquid’s bubbles or another featuring various brand-new household goods dotting a green lawn.

Of course, one can’t mention pop art without Andy Warhol and his piece of filmed performance art Sunset, which is, you guessed it, a 33-minute filming of a sunset. Most often, movies like Sunset originally played as visual backgrounds in nightclubs like the Factory, setting a mood with the music to enhance the denizens’ carousing.

“It’s extreme,” says Caruso. “His films were part of happenings. They were all in the theater, listening to music, drinking, partying, doing drugs. It was like ArtAFTERDark in the ’60s. It’s totally ironic since we see the most beautiful sunsets in the world.”

Worry not, you won’t just sit in the dark watching the sun go down for half an hour. The soundtrack features Nico reading her poetry. Gaye Chan, chairwoman of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Hawaii, will be on hand to introduce the film. She can probably answer head-scratching questions about the flick afterwards.

More odd goodness comes in the form of Cocteau’s avant-garde 1930 opus Le Sang D’un Poéte (Blood of the Poet). Fasten your seatbelts for mouths in the palms of hands, hermaphrodites, homicidal snowball fights and card games with a corpse as a table. The film is said to be heavily influenced by the short Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) by Luis Buñuel and that master of surrealism Salvador Dalí. Un Chien is also screening. Famous for the cringe-inducing scene featuring a razor cutting open a woman’s eyeball, the film pushes the boundaries of startling surrealist imagery, made even more shocking when one realizes it was released in 1929.

Coupled with the exhibition, From Buñuel to Warhol: Modernism in Film is a unique opportunity for island cinephiles to indulge their inner bohemian. It’s also a terrific chance for art newbies to get a cultural crash course in an age when the only sense of the readily available surreal comes in the form of Lady Gaga videos.

“I’m hoping that people would get a real sense of the art,” said Caruso. “Come see the series and you’ve learned a ton about 20th century film-making.”