Érik Bullot's 'Renversements 1' Explores Cinema's Future Through Eclectic References

Érik Bullot, a filmmaker, critic, and professor, has published 'Renversements 1, notes sur le cinéma', a collection of articles written between 1999 and 2008. The book, released by Éditions Paris expérimental, functions as a cabinet of curiosities, spanning references from Buster Keaton to Naomi Kawase, Sarkis to Michael Snow. In a text on Jean-Claude Rousseau, Bullot notes that Eugène Promio, Louis Lumière's operator, invented the first tracking shot by placing his camera on a gondola on the Grand Canal. To illuminate David Lynch's cinema, Bullot cites Diane Arbus: 'Most people live in fear of being subjected to a traumatic experience. Monsters are born with their own trauma. They are aristocrats.' The accumulation of these marvels is not gratuitous; Bullot aims to deconstruct conventional film history into complex crystals to preserve cinema's future amid intense technological upheaval. In his private cabinet, the mobile phone coexists with the thaumatrope, Stan Brakhage with Charlie Chaplin. The approach, though sometimes precious, offers a coherent response to contemporary questions about the seventh art.