Good news to end the week: you can now preorder Jan Baetens' new book "Une fille comme toi", which will be available from October 23rd. The book offers a peculiar rewriting of film-photonovels that relies on remixing film stills published in film-photonovels in order to create "a film that never existed but in which we recognize all of the scenes".
If you have the chance to travel, the book will be launched in Paris on October 23rd, where Jan Baetens will be present to talk about his work and sign copies.
Friday 23 October 2020
18:00
@ Le Monte-en-l'air
2 rue de la Mare, 75020 Paris
"From 1955 to 1965, cinema existed in a format that has since been forgotten: the film-photonovel. Long-overlooked, the film-photonovel is the literary adaptation of a real film screened in cinemas. This book offers a new variation and a rewriting of this significant historic medium. It radicalizes the idea of reuse and rewriting by using published images belonging to the author's private collection.
300 existing film stills have been selected from over a hundred film photonovels. Michelangelo Antonioni and Luchino Visconti rub shoulders with Alfred Hitchcock and Jacques Demy but also with a large number of lesser known directors from all film genres (western, comedy, horror, sci-fi, historical drama, etc.). The assembly and layout of the film stills reveal the real diversity of film-photonovels at the time.
Une fille comme toi offers an insight into the cinematic universes that captured the imagination of an epoch while providing a critical approach to the genre through short essays. This hybrid work celebrates an overlooked medium: a private collection of more than 1500 magazines has been reworked to create a film that never existed but in which we recognize all of the scenes."
https://www.jbe-books.com/products/une-fille-comme-toi-jan-baetens