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Maurice Lemaître «Has the feature started yet?» | Le film est déjà commencé?  - Filmposter
Maurice Lemaître, «Has the feature started yet?», 1951
Le film est déjà commencé? - Filmposter | Photography | © Maurice Lemaître
 


 
 

Categories: Film


France | 59' | 35mm, hand-colored b/w, 59' with Marcelle Dumont-Billaudot, Christiane Guymer, Isidore Isou, Maurice Lemaitre, Gil J.Wolman. Film in French, English translation included. | Participants: Marcelle Dumont-Billaudot, Christiane Guymer, Isidore Isou, Maurice Lemaitre, Gil J.Wolman
 

 Maurice Lemaître
«Has the feature started yet?»

Heir to the dadaist, surrealist and abstract filmmakers of the 1920's, Lemaître was able to combine equally aesthetics with politics - no easy task and one that fully justifies the current recognition of his work." Gérard Courant, Liberation
One of the major works of letterist cinema, «LE FILM EST DEJA COMMENCE?» had as much of a direct or hidden influence on the New Wave as it does on today's Avant-Garde. Its first screenings in Paris in 1951 became major events. The critics despised it, but this work is and will remain a landmark in film history.
«This film must be projected under special conditions: on a screen of new shapes and material and with spectacular goings-on in the cinema lobby and theatre (disruptions, forced jostling, dialogues spoken aloud, confetti and gunshots aimed at the screen...). This is not just a projection, but a true film performance, the style of which Maurice Lemaitre is the creator.»

Maurice Lemaitre 1951