Surrealist cinema is a modernist approach to film theory, criticism, and production with origins in Paris in the 1920s.Related to Dada cinema, Surrealist cinema is characterised by juxtapositions, the rejection of dramatic psychology, and a frequent use of shocking imagery.The first Surrealist film was The Seashell and the Clergyman from 1928, directed by Germaine Dulac from a screenplay by Antonin Artaud.n his 2006 book Surrealism and Cinema, Michael Richardson argues that surrealist works cannot be defined by style or form, but rather as results of the practice of surrealism.