June 9th, 18.30
On Venom and Eternity
Isidore Isou (1951 / FR / 35mm/ 120mins ) English subtitles.
The first and only film by the founder of the French Lettrist movement begins with a warning: ‘Dear spectators, you are about to see a discrepant film. No refunds will be given.’ Advocating for the rupture of language and photography, Isou expects the spectator to ‘leave the cinema blind, his ears crushed, both torn asunder by the disjunction of word and image’. At the 1951 Cannes Festival, where it received its first pubic screening, it won the admiration of Guy Debord and Jean Cocteau, who wondered if it would take 50 years before its radical aesthetics could be understood. The Lettrists believed the development of cinema had been stalled by the domination of the studio system. In order for a new cinema to emerge, it had first to be destroyed – symbolically and physically – by bleaching and scratching the images, and by replacing soundtracks with abrasive concrete poetry and enraged tirades.
This landmark film will be screened in a newly restored 35mm print! The film will be introduced by Pip Chodorov, who has been active in Paris and New York as an experimental film maker and distributor, he is also co-founder of L’Abominable, a cooperative film lab in Paris, and the moderator of the internet-based forum on experimental film, FrameWorks.
Greg Pope. 