Anemic Cinema

Anemic Cinema or Anémic Cinéma is a 1926 Dada/surrealist French experimental film by Marcel Duchamp (credited to his alter ego, Rrose Sélavy), made in collaboration with Man Ray and Marc Allégret.

The seven-minute film is composed of alternating static camera shots of spinning animated drawings disks — which Duchamp called Rotoreliefs — inscribed with puns and alliterations in French.

The text, which spirals in a counterclockwise motion, suggests erotic scenarios and the words, if read aloud, produce repetitive patterns of sounds that lead to scatological or obscene associations in reference to pulsating human sexual activity.

[1] To make Anémic Cinéma, Duchamp filmed painted designs he made on flat cardboard circles while they spun on a phonograph turntable.

[4] He brought the film on a trip to New York later that year, where he held another private screening at the Fifth Avenue Playhouse on December 22, 1926, and another at Miles Studio in early 1927.

Anemic Cinema cover of The Little Review , 1925