TRAITÉ DE BAVE ET D'ETERNITÉ

Isidore Isou arrived in Paris from Romania in 1945 where he founded the Letterist movement, an art and literary movement that owed inspiration to Dada and Surrealism. Letterism attempted to break down poetry into letters and syllables, and then all arts into their constituent parts, to build up new languages for each art form. Isou wrote, directed, photographed, composed the music for, and acted in TRAITÉ DE BAVE ET D'ETERNITÉ (Treaty On Venom And Eternity), the first Letterist film manifesto. Isou proceeds to discuss what is wrong with the cinema and then counter it with what he thinks the cinema should consist of through “Discrepant Cinema” in which the sound and the picture are purposefully unrelated and the images are manipulated or destroyed through bleaching and scratching.

Isou brought TRAITÉ DE BAVE ET D'ETERNITÉ uninvited to the Cannes Film Festival (1951) where it both caused a riot and won the audience prize for the avant-garde. Isou's "revolt against cinema" is a landmark work that prefigured the Letterist and Situationist cinema to come and influenced many experimental filmmakers, including Stan Brakhage. The film’s participants include some of the greatest names in 20th Century French arts and letters: Jean-Louis Barrault, Blaise Cendrars, Daniel Gélin, Colette Marchand, André Maurois, and Jean Cocteau who also designed the poster promoting the 1952 release on the Champs-Elysees.

This DVD edition of TRAITÉ DE BAVE ET D'ETERNITÉ presents the first authorized edition of the original version mastered in HD from the 35mm internegative restored by the French National Film Archives, with a soundtrack remastered by Frédéric Acquaviva. This DVD version runs 123 minutes, as it was premiered in Cannes On April 20, 1951. (Truncated versions of the film have circulated in North America.)

“The spectator must leave the cinema blind, his ears crushed, both torn asunder by this disjunction of word and image. The rupture between language and photography will form what I call 'discrepant cinema.' I hereby announce the manifesto of discrepant cinema!”

– Isidore Isou

"Thanks to Isou I realized that what was important in art was not the beautiful, but the new, the creation.”

– Ben [Vautier], Fluxus artist

"The greatest filmmaker of all time... ISOU is the leader of our generation.”

– Maurice Lemaitre, Ur

  Contents

Format: DVD-PAL / Region 0
(No Regional Code); DSL/Downloadable 1080p .mp4 file on server

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TRAITÉ DE BAVE ET D'ETERNITÉ
(France, 1951)

Director: Isidore Isou
Screenplay: Isidore Isou
Cinematographer: Nat Saufer
Editor: Suzanne Cabon
Assistant Director: Maurice Lemaître
Original Music: Daniel Guarrigue
Producer: Marc-Gilbert Guillaumin
Cast: Isidore Isou, Marcel Achard, Jean-Louis Barrault, Blanchette Brunoy, Blaise Cendrars, Jean Cocteau, Danièle Delorme, Edouard Dermithe, Daniel Gélin, André Maurois, Armand Salacrou & Rodica Valeanu

• 123 minutes
• 35mm
• B&W
• Sound

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Bonus Material

TRAITÉ DE BAVE ET D'ETERNITÉ - Theatrical Trailer

• 1 minute
• B&W

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Total Running Time: 02:03:40

Language: French. English, Spanish, German & Italian subtitles

Booklet Text: Frédérique Devaux (Bilingual French & English)

Published By: Re:Voir Video

Institutional Price: $250 (plus shipping), Digital File Download $500

To order call: 212.280.8654 or click here for information on ordering by fax, e-mail or post.