Isidore Isou

Born Isidor Goldstein in Botoșani, Romania in 1925, Isidore Isou arrived in Paris in 1945 and founded Lettrism the following year, announcing its existence by interrupting a Tristan Tzara premiere at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier. The movement proposed a total reconstruction of language starting from individual letters, extending into poetry, painting, and cinema. His 1951 film Traité de bave et d'éternité caused a scandal at Cannes, introducing what he called discrepant cinema — the deliberate dissociation of sound and image. He continued to write, theorise, and exhibit until his death in Paris in 2007, and is buried at Père-Lachaise.