Inside the Cauldron
We are thrilled to be crowdfunding for a short, non-profit, moving-image art film, based on an unpublished essay by the British-Mexican Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington (1917–2011), titled ‘Inside the Cauldron’.
Carrington was born into a wealthy family of textile manufacturers in Lancashire, England. After being expelled from two convent schools, she attended finishing schools in Florence and Paris, and then became the first student to enrol at Ozenfant’s art academy in London in 1936. In 1937 she began a relationship with the Surrealist artist Max Ernst, and the following year she began to exhibit with the Surrealists. After the outbreak of the Second World War she fled to Spain, where she suffered a nervous breakdown, detailed in her memoir Down Below (1944). She then travelled to New York, and then settled in Mexico in 1942, after marrying the Mexican poet Renato Leduc. After their divorce, she married Emerico “Chiki” Weisz, a Hungarian photographer and the darkroom manager for Robert Capa during the Spanish Civil War. In Mexico, where she spent most of the rest of her life, she became close friends with the Spanish artist Remedios Varo. She was also a founding member of the women’s liberation movement in Mexico during the 1970s.
Carrington remained a dedicated Surrealist throughout her life, and her paintings often show eerie, otherworldly realms, populated by insect-like humanoids and other hybrid creatures, as well as birds, hyenas, horses, dogs, and other animals. Her art has undoubtedly been undergoing a renaissance in recent years: her Self-Portrait (1937–38) was the landing page for the recent Tate exhibition ‘Surrealism Beyond Borders’, while the 59th Venice Biennale (2022) took its title from Carrington’s book The Milk of Dreams.
We have been granted exclusive access to film in Carrington’s former home and studio in Mexico City, which has not yet opened to the public. The film will become part of the museum’s permanent collection, as well as screened in the UK.
Our film, Inside the Cauldron, will follow a dancer (Isabel Eatherly Legate) who embodies a wounded bird, which enters Carrington’s house to seek refuge from the horrors of the outside world and human excesses that Carrington rails against in her essay. Trepidatious, the bird journeys from room to room, each just as the artist left it, bewitched by whispers that grow louder inside the house. Carrington’s sculptures witness the bird’s journey and facilitate an alchemical reaction where the bird metamorphoses into a hybrid creature, translated to the audience through dance. The soundtrack incorporates field recordings from the Mercado de Sonora, which Carrington frequented for creative and medicinal practice, layered with a voiceover by Carrington’s friend, Dame Marina Warner.
We’re very excited to be making this film, but need your help to make it happen. View our Kickstarter page here, and pledge money towards the project if you can! We only have 26 days to reach our goal, and we would be truly grateful for your support. Thank you!
