“We Support Everything since the Dawn of Time That Has Struggled and Still Struggles” – Introduction to Lettrist Cinema

A presentation of the key figures and the basic concepts of Lettrist cinema, which prefigured the breakthroughs of the nouvelle vague and the experiments of expanded cinema.

In October 1963 I met Gil J., and we schlepped to the scrap-metal market. [...] It was there that I came up with the following definition of Lettrism:
Lettrism: 1) technical definition: smithy, arsenal, place where unused weapons are stored; 2) volcanology: rumbling that announces certain volcanic eruptions. Examples: 1) “Thanks to L., insurgent groups were armed” – 2) “The people of Herculaneum did not pay heed to L.” [Acad.]
—Jean-Louis Brau, 1972

The Lettrist movement is unique in the history of avant-garde formations. Founded by Isidore Isou in Paris immediately after World War II, it remains active to this day, having lost none of its radicalism, either aesthetic or ethical. In this book, Nicole Brenez presents the key figures and the basic concepts of Lettrist cinema, the art form within which their formal innovations proved the most far-reaching, prefiguring the breakthroughs of the nouvelle vague and the experiments of expanded cinema.
Published with Moderna Museet, Stockholm, this book is part of “All the King's Horses” series, Stockholm, exploring the situationists, the last and most influential avant-garde movement of the European post-war era.

Nicole Brenez is a French historian and theoretician of cinema, specialized in avant-garde movements.