Venom and Eternity

Venom and Eternity is an avant-garde film by Isadore Isou, the crazed genius behind the Letterist movement in France. Although the Letterists had their theoretical roots in Dada and Surrealism and adored Tristan Tzara, they also sought to distance themselves from those previous art movements for some more daring and edgy, and yet also more all-encompassing. Isou and the Lettrists applied their theories to all areas of art and culture, most notably in poetry, film, novels, photography, architecture, painting and sociopolitics.

As Isou himself says in the film:

I believe firstly that the cinema is too rich. It is obese. It has reached its limits, its maximum. With the first movement of widening which it will outline, the cinema will burst! Under the blow of a congestion, this greased pig will tear into a thousand pieces. I announce the destruction of the cinema, the first apocalyptic sign of disjunction, of rupture, of this corpulent and bloated organization which calls itself film.

It's generally known by the name "Venom and Eternity" but the film's true title is Traité de bave et d’éternité, which translates literally as "Treatise of Saliva and Eternity".

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