Isidore Isou, the romanian-born french writer, passed away last July 28th in Paris. Isou, founder of the lettrist movement and author of the Manifeste du cinéma discrépant, which systematized the separation between image and sound in the cinema, had been very ill in the last years of his life.

His most known cinematic work, Traité de bave et d'éternité (1951) has been recently published in the USA by Kino in the DVD compilation Avant-Garde 2: Experimental Cinema 1928-1954 and will be available later this year in a new restored edition by Re:Voir

The 20th Images Festival closed last weekend. These are the winners of the 2007 competition:

- Images Prize for the Best Canadian Media Artwork in the festival:
David Hoffos (Lethbridge, Alberta) for Scenes From the House Dream:
Bachelor’s Bluff .

- National Film Board of Canada Award:
awarded by the NFB to the Best Emerging Canadian Film or Video Maker in the festival:
Andrea Cooper (Toronto) for Strange Things and Oh, Darlin…

- Best International On Screen (Film) Award:
Gerhard Holthuis (the Netherlands) Careless Reef #1

- Preface
Best International On Screen (Video) Award: Julia Meltzer and David Thorne / The Speculative Archive (USA) for We will
live to see these things, or, five pictures of what may come to pass.

- Best Off Screen Award: ex-aequo to Lonnie van Brummelen (the Netherlands) for Grossraum at
Gallery TPW  and to Thomas Köner + Jürgen Reble (Germany) for Quasar

Steam Whistle Homebrew Award: for excellence and promise in a local artist to Christina Battle (Toronto) for Three Hours, Fifteen Minutes Before the Hurricane Struck

-
Overkill Award: for artists "whose work approaches extremes of incorrigibility through form
and/or content, and challenges our notions of edgy experimental
practice" to
Bruce McClure (New York) for They Wakened Later, Simultaneously, Much
Refreshed . Honourable mention to Jennet Thomas (London, UK) for Because of
the War

Movie Assembly is a "collaborative internet film making media project" impulsed by Gokhan Okur. Its objective is to build short films using images stored on Flickr. "Flickr has millions of photos tagged by users and if you place proper images one after another you can build a video." There are some demo videos of the concept at the site. You can find more information here.

The magazine Zoom In online has posted an interesting podcast with Ken Jacobs, recorded at the Tribeca Film Festival. Jacobs talks extensively about his work Ontic Antics Starring Laurel and Hardy: Bye, Molly, its creation process and the motivators of the film.

Podcast