Duchamp is one of the most emblematic figures of Dadaism, despite refusing, in a posture of Dadaist autonomy, to align himself with the respective group. If his revolutionary urinal (“Fountain”, 1917) is one of the theoretical and chronological foundations of conceptual art, the permanent reinvention of Duchamp took in surrealism and experimental cinema. The short “Anémic Cinéma” was made at the studio of Man Ray and came signed under his alter ego/heteronym Rrose Sélavy, a fictional female character created by the artist in 1920. The film features permanently rotating circles, which Duchamp called “Rotoreliefs” evoking eyes in permanent mutation. Duchamp constantly attacks what he called “retinal art”, the beauty for its own sake that includes many artistic forms and tries for his part to place art directly at the service of reflection. Drawing the attention immediately, the images aim to distort the optical stimulus, in a succession of fixed shots of nineteen rotating discs that draw spirals or reveal texts which continuously rotate into each other. Like other works produced by the French avant-garde in the 20s “Anémic Cinéma” fits within the principles of cinéma pur, a current of the avant-garde pre-eminent in the 20s and 30s, distinguished by the absence of characters and a contempt for narrative structure, in favour of sensory stimulation and the study of the effects of movement applied to elements and geometric shapes. (SDM)