"'DADA, Surrealism, and the Cinematic Effect', Bruce Elder's superb companion volume to his earlier 'Harmony and Dissent', convincingly demonstrates that for the early twentieth-century avant-garde movements, cinema was the model, the preeminent form that prompted a recasting of the other arts. This wide-ranging study shows that Dada artists created cinematic collages and transformative machines, whereas Surrealists developed the film script as a new literary genre. His brilliant analyses of Duchamp's 'Anémic cinema', Man Ray's 'Retour À la raison' and 'Emak Bakia', and Buñuel's 'Un chien andalou' and 'Las Hurdes' are only surpassed by his intricate explication of Ernst's cinematic collage novels, which he relates as models for Lawrence Jordan's surrealist films. This is that rare book that casts the early twentieth-century avant-garde in a very new light." -- Rudolf Kuenzli, director, International Dada Archive, University of Iowa