Paris qui dort / The Crazy Ray + Live musical accompaniment from Deb Shaw

Come early for our apéritif hour with a drinks bar and complementary nibbles before the film, a chance to mingle, relax and start the evening in true Salon style.

René Clair’s Paris Qui Dort (1924), also known as The Crazy Ray, is a mischievous early science-fiction gem that turns the City of Light into a playground for surreal misadventure. When a strange ray from the Eiffel Tower freezes the citizens of Paris mid-motion, a small band of unaffected oddballs: a night watchman, a scientist, and a few bemused tourists, roam the motionless metropolis like ghosts in a frozen dream.

Clair uses this bizarre premise not just for comic effect, but to quietly prod at deeper questions: What would we do with total freedom? What happens when society’s structure disappears, and you’re left only with desire and impulse? Visually inventive and anarchic in spirit, Paris Qui Dort is both a time capsule of silent-era experimentation and a cheeky philosophical fable, dreamlike, haunting, and oddly joyful.

The film screening is accompanied by live music from Edinburgh-based harpist / pianist composer, and sonic artist Aurora Engine (Deborah Shaw). Her work  blends acoustic instruments, voice, and progressive electronica to create vivid, atmospheric soundscapes often embedding nature and industrial field recordings.  She is also a songwriter and active media composer.

Before the film screening, enjoy a short introduction from the Edinburgh Film Guild, one of the oldest continuously running film societies in the world, setting the scene for the film’s enduring legacy.