Synopsis
People seem to read in the title of the film much more than what I put in it when I made the film. Seeing the man and his dog at the end of the film is a bit of a joke…, it’s the absurdity that makes the audience accept what is actually a free play of pure lines and rhythms. “This is one of Breer’s best animated films, one of the best known and most accessible too. The lines intersect and gallop across the screen, as if they wanted to become forms, while sounds “from outside” are heard on the soundtrack. At the very end, the lines finally come together to form the momentary illustration of the film’s title.” F. Camping.
A word from Tënk
A Man and His Dog Out for Air is a black-and-white graphic film made by Robert Breer in 1957. It is a work entirely dedicated to the versatility of drawing as a medium, to the vibrancy of movement and the virtuosity of sketched figures.
With this film, Breer takes a critical posture to normative systems and formal logics, the pressure and constraints of a frame, and narrative logic.
In this exceptional work, the metamorphic and metaphoric functioning lend possibility to forms and figures to move and break free of their constraints. We witness both progressive transformations (from part to part) and more radical ones (from all to all): a wavy line in a graphic braid, the choreography of a man and his dog wandering in joyful cinematographic springs, or a parade of pyramids of informal signs.
These developments exist in relationship to poietic (the study of creative conduits) bodies: gestures, tracing and traces, mobile and movement, techniques of altering, fragmentation and dissipation that all regulate the artist’s creative process. From this, we learn about the performative aspect of artistic works and their potential for expression which leads us to understand, through what emerges in the trembling images, the instability of drawing, the trouble of movement and the fleeting blurring of the figure.
Patrick Barrès
Professor at the University Toulouse Jean-Jaurès
