In the Key of Cocteau
Schedule
Fri Nov 21 2025 at 07:30 pm to 09:15 pm
UTC-05:00Location
Heliconian Club | Toronto, ON
Advertisement
THE BLOOD OF A POET 1932ART DEATH DREAMS TRANSCENDENCE
A cine-concert evening inspired by the legendary French avant-garde artist Jean Cocteau
Live Music by North Wind Concerts
Ben Grossman, Alison Melville Colin Savage Debashis Sinha
Art by member artists of the Heliconian Club
Film by Jean Cocteau
“Poets…shed not only the red blood of their hearts but the white blood of their souls.”
Explore the plight of the artist, the power of metaphor and the relationship between art and dreams centered around the masterpiece film The Blood of a Poet by Jean Cocteau with a unique live score by members of North Wind Concerts.
Part cinematic séance, part avant-garde fever dream, Jean Cocteau brilliantly stretches the medium to capture the poet's obsession with the struggle between life and death.
Made in collaboration with Vicomte de Noailles (Le Chien d’Andalou), the film plays with its imagery like a lucid dream folding in on itself, layering Catholic iconography, queer longing and the kind of poetic experimental symbolism that echoed through to David Lynch, Derek Jarman, Guy Maddin and others.
Cocteau called the film “a disturbing series of voyeuristic tableaux, a descent into oneself, a way of using the mechanism of the dream without sleeping, a crooked candle, often mysteriously blown out, carried about in the night of the human body”
North Wind Concerts in addition to their live score to The Blood of a Poet will perform a prelude and postlude.
Advertisement
Where is it happening?
Heliconian Club, 35 Hazelton Avenue,Toronto, Ontario, CanadaEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.
