Read Frame Type Film: Or, Written on the Screen

From credits to subtitles to title cards and beyond, texts play a critical part in the structure of a film. Film curator Enrico Camporesi, graphic design historian Catherine de Smet, and designer Philippe Millot focus on an often-neglected field — experimental and artists' films — examining 24 works from the film collection at the Centre Pompidou in Paris that offer unique perspectives on the affinity between cinema and typography. The book is itself an experimental object, in which specially commissioned photography of analog filmstrips mirrors the explorative texts throughout.

The volume stems from the ambitious "TypoFilm" research project, initiated at the Centre Pompidou in 2020 and dedicated to constructing a genealogy of text on screen. Films discussed include Anémic Cinéma (Marcel Duchamp), L'Étoile de mer (Man Ray), The Flicker (Tony Conrad), Sailboat (Joyce Wieland), Film About A Woman Who… (Yvonne Rainer), and Light Reading (Lis Rhodes). Published by MUBI Editions.