Art Night at the Drive-In

Art house movies and drive-in theaters don't often mix. The whole idea would strike Joe Bob Briggs as being a communist conspiracy. But on May 7, the Kingman Drive-In in Delaware (it's located 9 1/2 miles north of 1-270 on SR 23) will host "Drive-In Surreal," an evening of experimental flicks and fresh country air.

"What could be better than watching surrealist films in the privacy of your own car under the stars?" asks Tim Lanza, the screening's organizer. Lanza is the U.S. distributor for the Rohauer film collection, a specialty movie company that's been located in Columbus for the past eight years. Developed from the estate of the late Raymond Rohauer — an art house theater owner and former business partner of Buster Keaton — the collection is an impressive list of titles from the avant-garde and the silent cinema.

The Rohauer Collection has a great line-up of films, but they're not often shown publicly due to the tastes of modern young viewers. "These films are part of a different era," Lanza notes sadly. "Just like drive-ins."

At the ripe old age of 30, Lanza teeters between Baby Boomer status and Generation X. His life-long passion for movies led him to earn a bachelor degree from the now defunct Department of Film and Photography at the Ohio State University, and to serve an extensive internship as a research assistant with the now defunct film program at the Columbus Museum of Art. With "Drive-In Surreal," Lanza is looking forward to being involved in something that doesn't have the word "defunct" attached to it.

But, he warns about the event, "I don't want people to come expecting a lecture. This is going to be more of a carnival."

The evening kicks off at 8:45 p.m. with Un Chien Andalou by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali. Made in 1928 with money borrowed from Bunuel's mother, it's the definitive surrealist movie, veering between moments of supreme shock and long passages of total craziness. The movie is littered with insects, severed hands, dead donkeys and several priests. Naturally, it's a cinematic classic.

Equally daring is Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet, the 1930 underground masterpiece by the director of the old French version of Beauty and the Beast. It's a barrage of dream images and vivid nightmares that were partly based on Cocteau's brief addiction to opium.

Two of the rarest films on the program are Dementia and Salome. Dementia is an oddball horror film from 1953 that used only music and sound effects to express the mental states of a female psychopathic killer, who may — or may not — be dreaming. Salome was an infamous production in, its day — 1923 — produced by the Russian avant-garde dancer Nazimova. The movie plays like a three-way collision among Oscar Wilde, Richard Strauss and Aubrey Beardsley.

Rounding out the night are two comedy shorts by Buster Keaton: The Goat and One Week, which are among his funniest films. Keaton was the only Hollywood filmmaker who was held in high regard by the surrealists. "Drive-In Surreal" promises a wildly unusual night — one that's unlikely to happen twice.