Michel Fokine approached the still-youthful art of ballet with fresh insight, revitalizing a form that had become saturated with spectacle. In 1898, after joining the Maryinsky Ballet, Fokine found himself dissatisfied with his beloved art form. It had been reduced to a circus act, as dancers showed

Erotic, Ethereal, Fantastic, Hallucinatory, Spectral, The early russians

Jean Epstein had a theory. The star of his theory was the machine -- an anti-hero, a character the audience loved to hate. Epstein recognized the machine as an extension of humans, who manipulate objects, but magnificently immortal. A filmmaker, Epstein cast the camera, his own personal extension, in

Clever, Hallucinatory, Intense, Machinistic, Manic, Surrealist film

Collage, Dense, Dissonant, Hallucinatory, Sublime, Surrealist film, Violent

David Lynch has been charged with making incomprehensible films. In fact, they make perfect sense, but not necessarily to us. An exemplary scene in "Fire Walk with Me" (1992) shows this: Two investigators are to receive their assignment from a very odd-looking woman named Lil. What they receive from

Anxiety, Dreamy, Enigmatic, Hallucinatory, Perverse, Quirky, Surreal, Surrealist film