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Sonotheque, 1444 W Chicago Ave
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SONOTHEQUE PRESENTS: TRAITE DE BAVE ET D’ETERNITE/ TREASTIE ON VENOM & ETERNITY (1951) 123 MINUTES – DIRECTED BY JEAN ISIDORE ISOU
CINEMATHEQUE SONOTHEQUE: FROM ARTHOUSE TO GRINDHOUSE
EVERY FIRST MONDAY OF THE MONTH
FILMS SELECTED BY JOE BRYL
6PM to 9PM
NO COVER
21+
In the aftermath of the devastation of WWII, Romanian writer Isidore Isou emigrated to Paris in 1945. Driven by his desire to publish his writings in Editions Gallimard, Isou followed a similar path taken earlier by fellow countryman and artistic agitator, Tristan Tzara. Isou began publishing his experimental poetry in the French capitol while becoming involved in various underground groups, numerous stormy events and jarring scandals. In 1946 he co-founded the anti-establishment art movement Lettrism (the precursor to Situationism) with Gabriel Pomerand. Using both the anti-art movements of Dada and Surrealism as an artistic template, Lettrism radicalized culture with its virulence and rancor and promoted the destruction of poetry in favor of an aesthetic based on provocation including the disruption of language and text. By 1968 Lettrism participated and greatly influenced the attempted May revolution in Paris by the left-wing movement comprised by unions, students and various radical organizations.
Between the 15th of August, 1950 and the 23rd of May, 1951, Isou began working sporadically on his inaugural film/manifesto Traite de bave et d’eternite which premiered in its still unfinished phase on the 20th of April, 1951 at Cannes. Stressing a statement of Nietzsche’s that “One needs much chaos to give birth to a dancing star”, Isou intended to disrupt, attack and unmask the stale and routine state of filmmaking with his use of ‘cinema ciselant’, the chiseling of the image that intended to disrupt, reduce and disregard all previous film clichés. Isou dedicated the work to his film-forefathers; Griffith, Chaplin, Clair, Von Stroheim, Flaherty, Bunuel, Cocteau and to “all those who brought something new and personal to the art of cinema.” This upheaval or what Isou described as “the duty of sacrilege and challenge” that is necessary in the domain of cinema.
With Traite, Isou operated directly on the surface of the film stock, scratching the film with a knife and drawing directly on the frame, violating what some perceived as ‘sacred’ material (his initial editor who had previously worked with Rene Clair began vehemently arguing with Isou on this mistreatment and finally left in disgust). This violent application of filmic laceration was later used to great effect by one of Isou’s early supporters, American avant-garde experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage. Isou further disrupted the viewer’s eye by inverting the image, using repetition to make the invisible seem visible and the separating the image from the soundtrack. Isou stated that “We must break down this natural association that made speech the correspondent of vision or the spontaneous commentary from the picture.”
By introducing this idea of discrepant montage, Isou fashioned an image unhindered by sound, a text that ran counter to the image, a parallel universe that made new associations of harmony/disharmony. This rupture was further enhanced with a soundtrack that retained a crackling noise filled with imperfections and the use of Isou’s own Hugo Ball-like rhythmic sound-poetry of repeated words and violent screams. With its unusual combination of shifting angles, superimpositions, repetition and sound collage Isou created a world of unhinged chaos. As Isou further stated, “Photos are already too banal … it all goes to show we must go further than photography. I’ll fuck the film stock with rays of sunlight, I’ll take the outtakes from old films and scratch them, skin them, so that unknown beauties can see the light of day … I want a film which will really hurt your eyes.”
When Traite was finally shown at Cannes in its unfinished state (consisting of a still in-work print of 19 reels or one of over 4 hours in length) at a festival fringe event it created the predicted controversy from the staid and reserved filmgoers attending while other insiders reveled in the intended disruption. By the time that the second chapter of the film began the audience grew more irritated and restless. Isou, who had only time enough to finish the editing of the images of the first section, was only able to present an incomplete film – one of only voices. A scandal quickly broke out and Isou got slapped by Sonica Bo, a specialist of children’s films. Supporters like Cocteau came to Isou’s defense saying “In front of Carne, they all fell asleep. You at least got the best scandal in the whole festival.” Traite ultimately did receive the 1951 Audience Prize for the Avant-Garde, as well as another prize for the festival fringe event. Isou returned to Paris and continued work on Traite, completing it on May 23 where it was finally projected at the film club of Armand Cauliez at the Musee de l’Homme. Besides Cocteau, other admirers like Maurice Scherer (aka Eric Rohmer) came to its defense. Scherer/Rohmer saw in Traite “a total rejection of this negative and anti-bourgeois spirit that dominated so much of our literature between the two wars.”
Cinematheque Sonotheque – From Arthouse to Grindhouse is proud to present a screening of this seminal film. We will screen an authorized edition, mastered in HD from the 35mm internegative restored by the French National Film Archives with a soundtrack remastered by Frederic Acquaviva (and not the shorter and more accessible version from the Raymond Rohauer collection) in DVD format. As Philip Winter writes in his blog Electric Sheep – A Deviant View of Cinema: “… perhaps on a more somber level, Traite de bave et d’eternite could be perceived as a rather melancholy film ruminating on the torturously irreconcilable schism between the aural and the optical, between the spoken and the seen, a film, perhaps, about the confounding milky weakness of language. Either way it is a must-see cinematic object.”
We will also screen Weekend (1930 – 11 minutes) a pioneering work from Walter Ruttmann, known for his experimental documentary Berlin – Symphony of a Great City (1927). Commissioned in 1928 by Berlin Radio Hour, Weekend, is an assembled mixture of words, music fragments and sounds. Ruttmann used film stock to record and edit this soundtrack collage of early audio-art. Prefiguring Guy Debord’s film Hurlements en faveur de Sade/Howls for Sade (1952), Weekend consists of a black screen with an audio soundtrack.
Doors open at 6pm with the shorts starting at 6:30pm followed by the main film. All prints are DVD projection. There is no cover for the screening but entrance is 21+ (not due to any salacious nature of the films but only because of the venue's licensing). All films in the series are selected by Joe Bryl, musical director and co-owner of Sonotheque.
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