Anthology Film Archives

Film Screenings / Programs / Series

LETTRIST FILM

January 29 – February 1

January 29-February 1, 2026

Romanian immigrant Isidore Isou (1925-2007) arrived in Paris after WWII to found Lettrism, an avant-garde movement intended to transform daily life through the reinvention of all forms of art and knowledge. Lettrism initially surged into public view as a sensational poetry movement; by 1950 Isou had turned his attention to disciplines including the novel and cinema. He conceived of several original Lettrist approaches to film including “discrepant cinema” – the dissociation of sound and image – and various forms of “chiselling” including painting and scratching directly upon film stock. In 1951 Isou presented an in-progress version of his first film, VENOM AND ETERNITY, at the Cannes Film Festival, causing a scandal and earning praise from Jean Cocteau. Many Lettrist films followed, including works by early adherents Maurice Lemaître, Gil J Wolman, and Guy Debord. Stan Brakhage saw Isou’s first film at SF MoMA in 1953 and corresponded with Isou in the 1960s. Nevertheless, early Lettrist achievements in experimental cinema have rarely been credited and have only recently begun to gain appropriate notice.

To celebrate both the 101st anniversary of Isidore Isou’s birth and the centenary of Maurice Lemaître, and in association with the current exhibit “Rewriting the World: Isidore Isou and the Lettrist Book” at the Center for Book Arts (January 21-May 2, 2026), co-curators Frédéric Acquaviva and Bill Kartalopoulos have programmed the following selection of key Lettrist films and seldom-seen shorts, offering a rare opportunity to explore Lettrism’s essential cross-disciplinary nature.

Presented with the generous support of Fonds de Dotation Bismuth Lemaître, Catherine Goldstein, and Barbara and Hedy Laure Wolman.

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