Directing

Maurice Lemaître

Born 1926-04-23 · Paris, France

Maurice Lemaître (born April 23rd 1926 in Paris) is an artist, writer and French poet. He is known to be one of the main figures of lettrisme, a movement started in the 1950s. Lemaître was educated at the School of Arts and Crafts and Public Works. After taking part in the Liberation of Paris, he began his philosophy degree at the Sorbonne. In 1948, he began his career as a journalist and wrote for the newspaper of the libertarian movement. A year later, he met Isidore Isou and immediately became interested in his political and avant-garde thoughts. In 1950, Lemaître becomes very invested in the Lettrist group and created in the same year the "Youth Front", a political journal; while simultaneously creating a literary and pictorial magazine, entitled "Ur," which remains as "The Minotaur" of lettrism. Since his literary creations, Lemaître has continued to develop various fields within the Lettrist movement: poetry, theater, dance, novel, painting, photography, film, economy, psychopathology and psychotherapy . Despite his dedication to the movement, since 2000, Lemaître distanced himself from the movement and is now relatively isolated from the main group.

Acting credits

The Nude Vampire poster
4.9

A young man falls in love with a beautiful woman being chased by sinister masked figures at night. He tries to track her down, and learns she's being held captive by his father and colleagues who believe she's a vampire.

The Nude Vampire

1970

Imag-en cada verso poster
NR

A BLACK AND WHITE FILM. A FLASH OF SOME COLOR. IMAGE IS IMAGINATION.

Imag-en cada verso

2019

The Night of the Clocks poster
5.0

A young woman inherits the house of Jean Michel but she is haunted by strange dreams and numbers. She has no idea that this is the beginning of the 'the night of clocks', which opened for those who have sinned, the dead which are not dead...

The Night of the Clocks

2007

Has the Film Already Started? poster
7.6

“A pink moving screen will stand at the entrance to the theatre, in the night. One hour before the screening a projectionist will show Griffith’s Intolerance on this screen. The start of the film will be announced at 8.30 but no one will enter before 9.30. During these 60 minutes of waiting, people on the first floor of the building will shake out very dusty carpets, and someone else will throw ice water on the heads of those spectators waiting for the screening. Some actors who have infiltrated the crowd will insult other actors on the first floor. At this moment only, and to stop the beginning of a scandal, the doors of the theatre will open…”

Has the Film Already Started?

1951

Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film poster
6.8

Experimental filmmaker Pip Chodorov traces the course of experimental film in America, taking the very personal point of view of someone who grew up as part of the experimental film community.

Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film

2011

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Maurice Lemaitre, Tarzan et Mao

2006

Venom and Eternity poster
6.9

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.

Venom and Eternity

1952

Portrait of Maurice Lemaître poster
NR

A founding member of the Lettrist movement with Isidore Isou, Maurice Lemaître describes here the genesis of the movement, his friendship with Isou, their discoveries in filmmaking and their inventions of infinitesimal and supertemporal art. Shot in his studio in Montmartre, we see him at work and showing his paintings, sculptures and films.

Portrait of Maurice Lemaître

2004

Une certaine histoire du cinéma expérimental français poster
NR

Founded in the second half of the 1990s, the experimental film association L'Etna witnessed the transition from film to digital cinema. Its premises, located in the heart of Paris, were unable to withstand gentrification.

Une certaine histoire du cinéma expérimental français

2019

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Resilliance (début)

2009

Behind the camera

Nos stars poster
7.0

A chronicle of the fantasies and dream of women in avant-garde contemporary cinema. The faces and bodies of new women haunt the paths and alleyways of avant-garde cinema.

Nos stars

2002

Has the Film Already Started? poster
7.6

“A pink moving screen will stand at the entrance to the theatre, in the night. One hour before the screening a projectionist will show Griffith’s Intolerance on this screen. The start of the film will be announced at 8.30 but no one will enter before 9.30. During these 60 minutes of waiting, people on the first floor of the building will shake out very dusty carpets, and someone else will throw ice water on the heads of those spectators waiting for the screening. Some actors who have infiltrated the crowd will insult other actors on the first floor. At this moment only, and to stop the beginning of a scandal, the doors of the theatre will open…”

Has the Film Already Started?

1951

Le Soulèvement de la jeunesse Mai 68 poster
NR

Maurice Lemaître had the ambition to make a really creative film about the revolt of May 68. For this, he did not renounce any of his filmic audacities and he managed to plunge into this new thematic dimension the cinematographic inventions put in In its previous achievements.

Le Soulèvement de la jeunesse Mai 68

1969

Films Imaginaires poster
NR

The "Films Imaginaires" are made up of only texts, filmed in cardboard boxes for the screen, of various works already shown to the public at the time, and which have been printed here or there, then gathered in the larger edition of my "Œuvres de Cinéma". The simple passage into photograms, then into the projection of these texts, with sound, transforms these "films" into another kind of film creation, even more advanced.

Films Imaginaires

1985

Erich Von Stroheim poster
NR

Documentary about notorious actor/director Erich Von Stroheim.

Erich Von Stroheim

1979

No artwork available
NR

1978, 15 min 30

Des scènes d'amour très réalistes avec force détails et gros plans

1978

Fin de tournage poster
NR

Excerpt from the film's soundtrack: - Hélène Richol: Why do you call your film "Fin de tournage"? - Maurice Lemaître: First of all because most of my films have a title relevant to the cinema: ever since "Le film est déjà commencé ?", "Votre Film", etc. (...) And then because when I thought of doing this film, I was very depressed... not in good shape... And I thought that this would be my last film.

Fin de tournage

1990

Bande annonce poster
NR

A trailer of Maurice Lemaître's films. One finds in this work some of the techniques used by Maurice Lemaître that are blossoming and that are applicable to his own work, thus becoming an auto-promoting instrument. A game on the nature of film that is addressed to the particular genres that are the propaganda film and the advertisement film.

Bande annonce

1993

Love Reinvented poster
NR

For a long time now, we have been seeing outrageous attempts at tackling the 'woman problem' (and the 'man problem') by pretentious and old-fashioned 'professors' or 'revolu-tionaries,' related to the Nazis or Stalinists, who have just as outrage-ously exalted the proletariat, race or nationality, leading to racist and imperialist crimes. Such excessive behavior can only lead to the exploita-tion and destruction of the very gender concerned. In any case, the basic components of simple love and simple friendship (and a fortiori of Super-Love and Super-Friendship), that we have explored in depth (as evoked in my film, What is Love?), are still so poorly understood today by our contemporaries that even those who claim to be happily experiencing these run the risk of being quickly proven wrong by Life itself."

Love Reinvented

1979

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Moteur!

1967

Un navet poster
9.0

No synopsis available yet.

Un navet

1977

Au-delà du déclic poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Au-delà du déclic

1965

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Le film de demain

1967

Chutes poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Chutes

1968

No artwork available
6.0

No synopsis available yet.

Un film porno

1978

Montage poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Montage

1977

No artwork available
1.0

No synopsis available yet.

Vies de MB, V: Tunisie, Tunisie

Le petit dieu poster
NR

An invitation to travel, one of the main themes of Lemaître, and a genuine manifestation of film Lettrism

Le petit dieu

2002

Une Oeuvre poster
NR

This film, first titled La poubelle du labo (The Lab Trashcan), and after L'Enfer du cinéma (Cinema's Hell), has been projected for the very first time in September 1968 at the French Cinémathèque. It can be considered as the cinematographic equivalent of Tristan Tzara's method on how to make a dadaist poem by putting words in a bag, and it mostly rises from Isidore Isou's film enthusiasm. The film has been made in fact out of elements of film strips found in the trashcan of a film development laboratory, that have been subsequently taped together bit by bit following the exact order they were originally gathered.

Une Oeuvre

1968

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

L'Écrevisse mathématique

1969

No artwork available
NR

“The film you are about to see now will not be projected onto the sky, as Maurice Lemaître’s film, UN SOIR AU CINÉMA, was in part in the 1960s during a performance in the gardens of the American Center, Boulevard Raspail, because it is made of transparent film, from beginning to end. And the image is precisely the projection of all the dust, scratches and accidents of all kinds whose transparency is altered, like so many stars and galaxies of possible images.” –Maurice Lemaître

To Screen on the Sky, At Night…

1979

Six films infinitésimaux et supertemporels poster
10.0

No synopsis available yet.

Six films infinitésimaux et supertemporels

1975

Un soir au cinéma, suivi de Pour faire un film poster
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Un soir au cinéma, suivi de Pour faire un film

1963

No artwork available
NR

No synopsis available yet.

Resilliance (début)

2009