Venom and Eternity (Isidore Isou, 1950)

[vogler]

I was told to check here for any information on a DVD release of this movie. I think I saw a DVD being sold through the French re:voir website, but I can't read French and so could not really tell what was being said there. Does anyone have any idea if this movie is available at all, in any region, and how I can obtain it? Thanks,

I was not aware of this re:voir release until now. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. As far as I know there are no other dvd releases of this film. I am surprised to see that re:voir are releasing it on DVD as Pip Chodorov who runs re:voir has always been very strongly opposed to dvd in favour of vhs releases (due to mpeg2 compression issues).

Here is a quote from Pip Chodorov about this 'Almost all the filmmakers I have released are eager to put out DVDs against my recommendation. I have to actually show them an example of a VHS and a DVD of the same film side by side, and point out that there is more information on the VHS tape. When they finally see the poor quality of mpeg compression with their own eyes, they calm down a little and agree to wait, but they usually keep bugging me about it. It's amazing how strong multinational coporations can be at brainwashing people.'

Anyway, this does appear to be a dvd release. It seems he is now releasing dvds of films whose main aesthetic or structure is not based on the kinds of single frame techniques that are very common in the type of avant garde films that re:voir deal with.

The page for this dvd can be found on the re:voir site here. There is currently no indication as to whether the dvd will contain English subtitles. If you hover over the text boxes underneath the main window (artistes, nouveautes, actualite etc.) then they turn into english translations.
Click on commander (to order) and it takes you to the ordering page.
This dvd is currently listed here as à paraitre (coming soon). I'm not sure what methods of payment they will be accepting for this. It says For your order to be filled you must send a check payable to RE:VOIR to our address which could make things difficult for international buyers, but it also says For other types of payment or for institutional sales please write [email protected], so I wonder what other forms of payment they mean.
EDIT: I just noticed that you can actually pay by credit card on this page.

This is a very interesting film from Isidore Isou who was a founder of the lettrist movement. It will appeal to anyone interested in the work of Guy Debord and perhaps those interested in the more abstract and philosophical work of Jean-Luc Godard (whose work I believe the Lettrists disliked). It is also interesting for it's use of techniques such as scratching of the film emulsion and apparently this influenced Stan Brakhage to adopt similar techniques in his work.

There is an interesting page about this film here which also includes an mpg copy of the film available for download. I don't want to discourage people from buying the dvd though, because small companies who release obscure films such as these need to be supported. We can also be sure that the dvd will be much better quality.

[Tommaso]

I finally watched this film, on the Kino Avant Garde 2 set, having been somewhat afraid to tackle it after reading the Savant review which said it was a complete pain in the arse, likening Isou to Yoko Ono. Well, while I wouldn't contest that latter point, I have to say that I was quite amused and astonished, too. While the way Isou mishandles the film stock itself didn't appear too original to me (especially considering the film's length), I really liked the film's over-the-top character. I'm not sure how seriously one should take it as a manifesto for a new art form. Isou is so over-pompous all the time, starting with the presentation of his books, the written addresses to the audience, the highlighting of every celebrity appearing briefly by printing their names on the screen, that I wonder whether the film isn't really tongue-in-cheek, making fun of those aspirations of art movements like the dadaists, surrealists etc. before. The demonstrations of lettrist poetry almost got me rolling on the floor...
If it's meant to be serious, I at least admire the fervour and youthful intensity of it. Provocation for provocation's sake then, but nicely done, and some of the thoughts presented like "all images have the same value, and they mean nothing" are not dissimilar to what John Cage said about music, though Cage of course was almost indefinitely more subtle.

[HerrSchreck]

Iadmire the fervour and youthful intensity of it. Provocation for provocation's sake then, but nicely done, and some of the thoughts presented like "all images have the same value, and they mean nothing" are not dissimilar to what John Cage said about music, though Cage of course was almost indefinitely more subtle.

God I cant stand Cage, but that's besides the point.

The fervor and intensity is absolutely the key here. An artifact from another time not so long ago which may as well have been another planet.

We've slid into a time where there arent really any more schools of aesthetics, sliver cultures of obscure art and fashion which bleed up and out due to a growing sense of residing profundity or even genius that ultimately "takes the world by storm" and leaves a huge mark on culture and spins off a thousand imitations and PBS documentaries after the fact.

Vibrant places where things were happening, vibrant cominglings of aqrt and music and literature and painting, scenarios as portrayed in Isous film where young and old gathered to yell and scream about SOmething.. something as important to them as a religion to others, completely unfashionable looking souls in taped glasses and crew cuts in a world where everyone did not think that they could be an artist, where the time spent on a single ISM could be years of hard fought discovery and not a night on your laptop.

Sure the end result could be, as in VENOM, a bit silly at times, but it is indeed wonderfully romantic owing to the very small size of the population of adherents to each individual ism... back before the proliferation of art programs art colleges art certificates art trade schools artists--hot Japanese painter chicks-- dancing barefoot in cargo pants throwing buckets of paint at huge canvasses in vast brick wall lofts in ink - jet color printer commercials... aesthetic circles were populated by a small number of half-mad half-retarded dudes like Isou who felt so strongly about what they were doing, and got the attention of Absolutely Nobody in mainstream society (versus today where all of mainstream society want to find out where dudes like Isou are living, buy up the building where he lives and all the surrounding buildings and cafes and clubs and abandoned warehouses, renovate them, raise the price and feel Like Him, but with far more gadgets and much nicer clothes and means of transportation)... causing the most obsessed like him to live their whole lives stuck in that, corny by todays sensibility, agonized crouch whining "but you don't understaaannnd maaannnnn!"

Another time indeed. Those who knew NYC even 8 years ago wont believe their eyes today. There's literally no single street in Manhattan where a struggling young actor, writer, director, musician, etc (making under six figures) could afford to live anymore... at least if he doesn't want 4 to 5 rommates in a studio apt.

It's the vanished over-the top sense of "breaking thru" to something new, of really being part of an "underground", that makes a passionate burp like VENOM & ETERNITY so charming, regardless of the content.

[Tommaso]

Another excellent post, Schreck, which perfectly illuminates why this film is potentially great even if it is silly. The bleak image you paint of the current state of affairs in the arts is sadly most to the point, even if I sense a certain romanticism here, a romanticism which has informed all the major innovators in the arts since 1800 (even if some of those much-cherished avantgardists would have strongly denied any such leanings). These idealists indeed seem to have either gone completely or are no longer seen by anyone, not even by those who could be regarded as relatively informed about what is going on. There hasn't been a major new philosophy in the film world for many years, possibly not since the French and Japanese nouvelle vagues, and it somehow frightens me to see that the most interesting and daring new works almost all seem to come from people who are now in their old age: think of octogenarians like Godard and Rivette, or Stockhausen in the musical world (though I assume you won't like him either). Even David Lynch is over 60. It's even worse in literature: I can't think of any young author who would even DARE to do what 70-year-old Pynchon did in "Against the Day". Jodorowsky hasn't been able to do a single film for sixteen years now, and Peter Greenaway (whatever you think of him, but surely he's a man who follows his own ideas and must be an innovator) just doesn't get his films released theatrically or on disc anymore.

where the time spent on a single ISM could be years of hard fought discovery and not a night on your laptop.

True, though I wouldn't see this wholly negatively. The technology available has led to a great democratization in arts (just as Cage, again, predicted), but the problem is that the audience (diminishing anyway) can't sort out anymore what might be interesting for them and what not. Absolutely everyone with a PC can put their music onto myspace (which doesn't mean that the results need to be bad), and those with a little more money to buy a camera can do the same with videos on youtube, but who in the potential audience would have the time and the attention span to mole his way through all these things? Isou wouldn't probably be even noticed today.

It's the vanished over-the top sense of "breaking thru" to something new, of really being part of an "underground", that makes a passionate burp like VENOM & ETERNITY so charming, regardless of the content.

It also has to do with YOUTHFULNESS, with rebellion against the older generation. Nowadays there is little to rebel against, and surely no-one to get shocked. I love how Isou apparently wants to be De Sade or Lautreamont, but hell, every life-style designer type today will have these authors on the bookshelf and probably even flirts with putting some of the Marquis' ideas into practice with his girlfriend, because it's fashionable. As you rightly observe: the media is now looking for the latest thrill to embrace and market it, whereas in Isou's time those who had the power in the media (the conservative critics) duly threw their mud upon those who rebelled. There were few who spoke up for the new then. One of these was Cocteau, who said something to the effect that he loved the youth (and youths, but that's another point) because they were always RIGHT by definition. And probably that's why Isou duly gave the last shots of the film to Cocteau.

[planetjake]

Interesting posts.

I attend what is generally believed to be the most liberal of the liberal arts colleges in the United States. I won't name names, but our school slogan is "Create Change". Very ironic, considering the fact that our film department is teaching from the same handbook that DW Griffith must have read before filming A Corner in Wheat. That is, it would certainly seem that way, if any of the teachers or students had ever heard of or care about either DW Griffith or A Corner in Wheat.

Our film department has been reduced to something of a public school (think AMERICAN public school at about 1840...) for the film industry. Rarely do you hear talk of aesthetics or philosophy. Instead, while walking down the halls, you hear students referring to their films by their budgets and not their titles. I'm not joking. I have spoken to more than a handful of Seniors who have not heard the Name Kenneth Anger, Ken Jacobs or even... Woody Allen.

Walking into a class and trying to explain to teachers and other students that you don't make narrative film is an endless embarrassment. I've memorized a dialogue in response to the infinite grilling I get.

We don't read Film Comment, We don't read Eisenstein, we don't even read Rosenbaum. We read Entertainment Weekly... People. . .

Still, every 1,000 or so people, you meet other young people (I'm 22), interested in the development of aesthetics. Generally you cling to these people, follow their work and keep them as close as you can. There ARE mini-revolutions happening. But they are just that.

A Youtube page does not constitute a New Wave.

[toiletduck!]

I'm fighting the same good fight in the theatre community in the same city, planetjake -- we should talk.

-Toilet Dcuk

[toiletduck!]

Isou wouldn't probably be even noticed today.

He'd be noticed, just not taken seriously. That part takes cultural hindsight.

-Toilet Dcuk