Premiering in 1952, VENOM AND ETERNITY was immediately banned for its experimental and provocative nature. It is divided into two sections: a non-narrative soundtrack that resembles an interior monologue with physiological noises, and a visual component featuring the irregular alternation of black and white circles projected onto a weather balloon. This landmark work, which received an audience prize at the 1951 Cannes Film Festival, heavily influenced subsequent experimental filmmakers, including the Letterist and Situationist movements. The screening will be introduced by Frédéric Acquaviva.

Venom and Eternity / Traité de Bave et d’Éternité with Frédéric Acquaviva

In this experimental film, Isidore Isou, the leader of the lettrist movement, lashes out at conventional cinema and offers a revolutionary form of movie-making: through scratching and bleaching the film, through desynchronizing the soundtrack and the visual track, through deconstructing the story, he aims to renew the seventh art the same way he tried to revolutionize the literary world.