The lettrisme is a movement born in 1945 at the time of the arrival in France of Isidore Isou. Lettrisme sticks to poetic sounds, onomatopoeias, with the music of the letters, laid out in an arbitrary way, more than within the meaning of the words. Definition that Isou in 1947 of it in Bilan lettrist gives: “Art which accepts the matter of the letters reduced and become simply themselves (being added or replacing the poetic and musical elements completely) and which exceed them to mould in their block of coherent works.”

Lettrisme, is, with the Oulipo, one of the main movements of avant-garde contemporary since the Dadaisme and the Surréalisme. It represents an extreme attempt at going beyond of the creative activity, founded on a rigorous knowledge of its standards. He is opposed Surréalisme all while proposing to continue what he had undertaken: opposition to the lifestyle generated by capitalism, subversion of middle-class manners, release of the powers of the language,…

Did lettrisme ramifying in multiple currents (hypergraphy, infinitesimal, etc) the lettrist group stick to all the forms of art, including the Cinéma ( the Film is already started? ) of Maurice Lemaître, 1951), ( Treated of dribble and eternity of Isidore Isou, 1951), the Dance ( Choreographies lettrists , of Maurice Lemaître) and the Painting ( Hypergraphies lettrists , of Isou, Lemaître, Roland Sabatier). The considerable theoretical work of Isou includes/understands, beside exposed doctrines lettrist, a comment criticizes very scholar of the Littérature, of the Cinéma, the Musique… But while challenging systematically, by dialectical requirement, any criterion of organization of the language (written, visual, sound…) lettrisme leads to a formal dead end and a particularly alambiquée form of elitism, that as aucuns would describe dictatorial .

However, and in spite of the disagreements which bind the main actors of the movement (particularly between Isou and one of its Debord ex-disciples), this creative dash allowed daring works like the Syncinéma of Maurice Lemaître, and to give a little wire to retordre with the next generation…