My school had a film club. Early 1960s so it involved a 35mm reel-to-reel projector, which meant the film had to be rewound at the end to be ready for the next showing. One time, when the lights dimmed we found ourselves watching Tom Courtney running backwards down a country lane. At a stroke, by forgetting to rewind the film, our teacher had transformed “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” into a Surrealist film.

The Surrealists had a variety of ways of removing rationality from the experience of viewing a film. Sometimes – perhaps when the recreational drugs had run out – they would spend the evening in Paris running from cinema to cinema watching random snatches of several different films – the film equivalent of Chinese Whispers. To randomise the experience even more they would wave their hands in front of their eyes as they watched.

I’ve always thought the Surrealists could have saved themselves a lot of effort by joining my school’s film club.

* ( A dog and a toilet? That was how my friend referred to Luis Buñuel’s Surrealist masterpiece “Un chien Andalou” )