Le Retour à la Raison is a unique meeting between musician and composer Teho Teardo and US painter, photographer and director Man Ray, exponent of Dadaism, who died in 1976 in Paris.
The project, released on Specula Records, consists of original music composed by Teardo for Man Ray’s silent films “Le Retour à la Raison”, “L’Étoile de Mer” and “Emak Bakia”.
The concert also includes the participation of a real orchestra of guitarists and bassists who will perform a composition in C# minor with a growing emotional impact.

Le Retour à la Raison (1923)
Le Retour à la Raison (Return to reason) is basically a kinetic extension of Man Ray’s still photography. Many of the images are animated photograms, a technique in which opaque, or partially opaque, objects are arranged directly on top of a sheet of photographic paper and exposed to light: a technique that Man Ray called “rayography.” For Le Retour, the artist sprinkled objects like salt and pepper and pins onto the photographic paper. He also filmed live-action sequences of an amusement park carousel and other subjects, including the nude torso of his model and lover, Kiki of Montparnasse.

L’Étoile de Mer (1928)
L’Étoile de Mer (The Sea Star) is based on a script by Robert Desnos and depicts a couple (Alice Prin and André de la Rivière) acting through scenes that are shot out of focus. Almost all of the scenes in this film are shot either off a mirror like the final shot, or through diffused and textured glass.  film collides words with images (the intertitles are from an otherwise lost work by poet Robert Desnos’) to make us psychological witnesses, voyeurs of a kind, to a sexual encounter.

Emak Bakia (1926)
Subtitled as a cinépoéme, the film features many techniques that Man Ray used in his still photography, including Rayographs, double exposure, soft focus and ambiguous features. It shows elements of fluid mechanical motion in parts, rotating artifacts showing his ideas of everyday objects being extended and rendered useless.

Teho Teardo has become a protagonist of the contemporary European music scene, with important collaborations such as that with Blixa Bargeld, singer of Einstürzende Neubauten and former Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds guitarist, or that with playwright Enda Walsh for the album “Ballyturk”, that also includes the participation of Cillian Murphy, Joe lally (Fugazi) and Lori Goldston, cellist of Nirvana.
Winner of Ennio Morricone award at Italia Film Fest, Golden Ciak for the best soundtrack and David di Donatello for Paolo Sorrentino’s film “Il Divo”. Teardo is also the author of the soundtracks of two films presented at 2014 Turin Film Festival: “Triangle” by Costanza Quatriglio and “Senza Lucio” by Mario Sesti. His collaboration with Oscar winners directors Gabriele Salvatores and Paolo Sorrentino, and many Italian directors (Molaioli, Chiesa, Vicari, Incerti, Cuppellini), have made him a point of reference for music in the cinema.

[photo: Marco Pasqualotto]