Off-screen cinema : Isidore Isou and the Lettrist avant-garde / Kaira M. Cabañas.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cabañas, Kaira Marie, 1974- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Isou, Isidore.

Experimental films--France--History and criticism--20th century.

Experimental films.

Cinematography--France--Special effects--History--20th century.

Cinematography.

Lettrism in motion pictures.

Lettrism.

Isou, Isidore--Criticism and interpretation.

Criticism and interpretation.

History.

France.

Cinematography--Special effects.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

xii, 479 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Summary:

One of the most influential avant-garde movements of postwar Paris was Lettrism, which stimulated an interest in the relations between writing and image in poetry, painting, and especially cinema. The Lettrists served as a bridge between the earlier works of the Dadaists and Surrealists and the later Conceptual artists. Off-Screen Cinema is the first monograph in English about the Lettrists. Offering a unique portrait of the avant-garde scene of 1950s Paris, it focuses on the film works of key Lettrist figures sush as Gil J Wolman, Maurice Lemaître, François Dufrêne, and especially the movement's founder, Isidore Isou, a Romanian immigrant whose "discrepant editing" deliberately uncoupled image and sound. Through Cabañas's history, we see not only the full scope of the Lettrist project, but also its impact on Situationism, the French New Wave, and the New Realists, as well as American filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction

To salivate is not to speak, as boring as watching dust

French cinema dies of suffocation

Spasmodic spurts of white light on a sphere

Eroticism should occur in the audience

Epilogue.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780226174457

022617445X

9780226174594

022617459X

OCLC:

870097964