The selection of texts in this book represents a journey through pivotal moments of the history of
experimental cinema.
What cinema. Voluntarily without punctuation, with the aim of leaving a
free reign to multiplicity and avoiding any hasty interpretation.
During
the course of the 20th century, cinema, television, and then other media
have imposed the principle of realism in a radical way. They have
developed such a level of crisis that in the orgiastic marriage between
the world in which we live and its image, our contemporary society only
thinks through its representation.
This selection of texts is not just an
exhaustive study of a shifted history of the animated image—film—but a
succession of markers in an artistic domain, which was lucky enough to
stay on the sidelines.
Experimental filmmaker, Jean-Michel Bouhours (born 1956) is the author of some thirty films since 1975. Former chief curator, in charge of the Cinema Department at the Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Pompidou (1992-2003), chief curator in the Modern Art Department (2008-2013) then head of the Modern Art Department (2013-2016); director of the Nouveau Musée national de Monaco between 2003 and 2008. In the field of experimental cinema, author of the books: L'Âge d'or : Correspondance Luis Buñuel-Charles de Noailles (with Nathalie Schoeller), Cahiers du MNAM, Centre Pompidou, 1993; Man Ray, directeur du mauvais movies (with Patrick de Haas), Centre Pompidou, 1996; Michel Nedjar : Tout est poupée. Conversations avec Jean-Michel Bouhours, Buchet-Chastel, 2021; José Antonio Sistiaga : De Rerum Natura, Kutxa Fundaxioa, 2022.
