Antonin Artaud "La Nouvelle Revue Française"; they were rejected, but the editor, Jacques Rivière, wrote back seeking to understand him, and a relationship via letters developed. Their compilation into an epistolary work, "Correspondance avec Jacques Rivière", was Artaud's first major publication. Artaud cultivated a great interest in cinema as well, writing the scenario for the first surrealist film, "The Seashell and the Clergyman" (1928), directed by Germaine Dulac. This film influenced Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel, two key Spanish surrealists, when they made "Un Chien Andalou" (1929). Artaud's performance as Jean-Paul Marat in Abel Gance's "Napoleon" (1927) used exaggerated movements to convey
Un Chien Andalou defined Surrealism as "Psychic Automatism", unconscious, capable of returning to the mind its true functions, beyond any form of control by reason, morality or aesthetics." The film was financed by Buñuel's mother, and shot in Le Havre and Paris at the Billancourt Studios over a period of 10 days in March 1928. It is a black and white, 35mm, silent film, with a running time of 17 minutes, although some sources state 24 minutes, and a physical length of 430 meters. For many years (and still), published and unpublished reports have circulated that Buñuel had used a dead pig's eye,