Théories et pratiques cinématographiques de Benjamin Fondane. La poétique du son

This article delineates the scope and rationale of ongoing doctoral research into the cinematographic praxis and theoretical framework of Benjamin Fondane, with a specific focus on the role of sound within his conception of experimental cinema. The study addresses a significant lacuna in academic discourse regarding the French interwar avant-garde by reconstructing the ideological and theoretical foundations of Fondane’s work.

The central thesis posits that Fondane articulated a unique "poetics of sound," a cinematic philosophy wherein the auditory experience functions as a form of poetry that privileges the constitutive sounds of words over their semantic or logical utility. Situated within the profound technological and socio-political flux of the 1920s and 1930s—marked by the tension between the emergent commercial "talkie" and European avant-garde aestheticism—the research portrays Fondane as an idiosyncratic modernist operating at the confluence of Dadaism, Surrealism, and Constructivism.

Drawing upon extensive archival analysis and translation of primary correspondence, the article examines how Fondane sought to liberate cinema from the constraints of rational syntax and the "imperialism" of verbal language. By analysing his collaboration on Rapt (1934) and his direction of the lost film Tararira (1936), the study demonstrates that Fondane championed a dialectic where sound complements rather than duplicates the visual image, thereby fostering a subjective "image of the mind" and engaging the spectator in active critical thought. Ultimately, this research argues that Fondane’s theoretical resistance to narrative logic remains highly pertinent to contemporary cinematic discourse.