Between-the-Images

Art and moving images

Published for the first time in 1990—its original title is “L’Entre-images: Photo, Cinéma, Vidéo”—this volume brings together 20 illustrated essays written between 1981 and 1989 by Raymond Bellour, one of the world’s most prominent film theorists. As he writes in his foreword to this English edition, “‘Between-the-Images,’ which was innovative yesterday, is now a kind of archeological corpus. That is one of its virtues. It recalls how the landscape of the moving image was constituted and historicizes the first creative passages between film, video, and photography.”

Considering the works and the strategies of artists and filmmakers such as Thierry Kuntzel, Jean-Luc Godard, Chris Marker, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Gary Hill, and Bill Viola, he examines the slow but inexorable change in moving images, putting his emphasis on three major areas of transformation: between stillness and movement, inside the photographic analogy, and between language and image. At once poetical and concisely argued, accompanied by numerous film stills, Bellour’s essays such as “The Pensive Spectator,” “Video Utopia,” “The Limits of Fiction,” and “The Phantom’s Due” are an invaluable and still relevant analyses that contribute to an understanding of the issues of today’s creation.

Raymond Bellour is a French writer, film critic, and theoretician. Emeritus Research Professor at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, he has written numerous books on film and literature, and organized several solo and group exhibitions, such as the landmark “Passages de l’image” in Centre Pompidou (1989–1990). In 1991 he founded the renowned film review “Trafic” with Serge Daney. He is also the editor of the complete works of the poet Henri Michaux.

The book is part of the Documents series, co-published with Les presses du réel and dedicated to critical writings.