Jeux des reflets et de la vitesse

The brother of Rene Clair, Chomette is a relative unknown who made two very interesting avant-garde short films in 1926. In that year Chomette and Man Ray collaborated on a film for the Count Etienne de Beaumont, which was titled A Quoi revent les jeunes films?. The London Film Society showed it in 1926, but soon after, Man Ray, Chomette and the Count had a falling out, which led to Ray releasing his part of the film as Emak Bakia and Chomette his part as Jeux des reflets et de la vitesse and Cinq Minutes de Cinema Pur. His reflections on film can be seen in the next sentences. “The cinema is not limited to the representative mode. It can create, and has already created a sort of rhythm... Thanks to this rhythm the cinema can draw fresh strength from itself which, forgoing the logic of facts and the reality of objects, may beget a series of unknown visions, inconceivable outside the union of lens and film. Intrinsic cinema, or if you prefer, pure cinema – because it is separated from every other element, whether dramatic or documentary, is what certain works lead us to anticipate...” (Tanya Small & Pip Chodorov)