Short answers, pulled from the story.
André Breton is considered the leader and founding figure of Surrealism. The movement was officially established after October 1924, when Breton published his Surrealist Manifesto on the 15th of October 1924, claiming the term for his group over a rival faction led by Yvan Goll.
The word "surrealism" was coined by Guillaume Apollinaire in March 1917, first appearing in a letter to the poet Paul Dermée. Apollinaire then used it in his program notes for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes production of Parade, which premiered on the 18th of May 1917.
In his 1924 manifesto, Breton defined Surrealism as "pure psychic automatism" , the expression of thought without control by reason, aesthetics, or moral consideration. He also described it as based on belief in the superior reality of neglected associations, the omnipotence of dream, and the disinterested play of thought.
Early Surrealist films include René Clair's Entr'acte (1924), Germaine Dulac's The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928), Man Ray's L'Étoile de mer (1928), and Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's Un Chien Andalou (1929) and L'Âge d'Or (1930).
Several Beat Generation writers were directly influenced by Surrealism. Allen Ginsberg cited Antonin Artaud's essay "Van Gogh - The Man Suicided by Society" as a direct influence on "Howl." William S. Burroughs developed his cut-up technique with former Surrealist Brion Gysin, calling it the "Surrealist Lark." Philip Lamantia and Ted Joans are often categorized as both Beat and Surrealist writers.
Surrealism was politically aligned with communism, anarchism, and Trotskyism at various times. Breton and his associates supported Leon Trotsky and his International Left Opposition, and by the end of World War II the group explicitly embraced anarchism. In 1952, Breton wrote that it was "in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognised itself."