ICA Cinematheque: The Wizard of Oz

Eager to showcase the recently developed three-strip Technicolor technology, MGM secured adaption rights to L. Frank Baum's fantasy adventure novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, foreseeing the visual opportunity to transition from the dreary sepia backdrop of rural Kansas to a vibrant, multi-coloured landscape of Oz.

The result was a lavish musical starring Judy Garland, now heralded as one of the true classics from the Golden Age of early Hollywood. Yet this children's adventure formed the structural blueprint of a fantasy-construction narrative that would be later emulated in the works of David Lynch, where the trauma of an unbearable reality is escaped via psychological retreat into an elaborate fantastical hallucination.