"Parade" de Satie

The 2016 film Parade de Satie is a screen adaptation centered on the 1917 avant-garde ballet of the same name, a landmark collaboration between composer Erik Satie, poet Jean Cocteau, painter Pablo Picasso, and choreographer Léonide Massine. Produced in a modern context to commemorate the centennial legacy of the Ballets Russes, this film serves to document and interpret the original surrealist spirit that famously shocked the Parisian public during the height of the First World War.

The production design draws heavily from Picasso’s original cubist costumes and the whimsical, industrial-inspired sets that originally sought to blend daily life with the artistic subconscious. By utilizing high-definition capture technology, the 2016 iteration aims to preserve the intricate spatial relationships and the jarring, rhythmic dissonance of Satie’s score, which famously incorporated sounds of typewriters and sirens. Critics have noted its importance as a pedagogical bridge between early 20th-century multidisciplinary art and contemporary film spectatorship.