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MUBI, the global film distributor, streaming service, and production company, presents READ FRAME TYPE FILM, the first book from its brand new global publishing arm, MUBI Editions.
Publishing on June 17, 2025 as the first title in its ‘Projections’ series, the book is available to pre-order now on MUBIEDITIONS.COM and will be distributed online and through bookshops internationally by D.A.P / Distributed Art Publishers (USA & Canada) and Thames & Hudson (UK & other territories worldwide).
Prepared in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou in Paris, READ FRAME TYPE FILM is a richly illustrated work, exploring the relationship between film and typography. From credits to subtitles to title cards and beyond, text plays a critical part in the structure of a film. Yet, away from the world of mainstream cinema, these textual—and visual—elements have often been overlooked. In READ FRAME TYPE FILM, curator Enrico Camporesi, design historian Catherine de Smet, and designer Philippe Millot aim to address this gap by focusing on the often neglected fields of artists’ film and other experimental cinema.
They bring their expertise to a discussion of 24 films, a meaningful homage to analogue cinema’s standard 24-frames-per-second frame rate, from the collection at the Centre Pompidou, dating back as far as the 1920s, that together offer unique perspectives on the affinity between cinema and the written word. Composed of a series of rich explorative texts, accompanying specially commissioned photography of analogue film strips from the collection, the book is itself an experimental object, in which text and images mirror one another.
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Inside spread: Read Frame Type Film
Among the films featured are works by renowned figures of modern art such as Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, as well as some of the most significant contributors to the field of avant garde cinema, including Dziga Vertov, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Yvonne Rainer and Michael Snow. Across the 24 films, as the book’s authors explore, the traditional role of text on screen is replaced by something more ambitious and invigorating, from concrete poetry to instructional signs, word fragments to optical illusions. Through their discussion of the typefaces and techniques used by these artists for a vast array of text styles, the authors weave together the significant histories of two intimately connected artforms and foreground the written word on screen.
Developed from the ambitiousTypoFilm research project, instigated at the Centre Pompidou in 2020, READ FRAME TYPE FILM spotlights the endless possibilities of interplay between images and text, in a beautifully produced work that sits at the intersection of film, visual history, and design.
Full list of films featured:
1. Anémic Cinéma (Marcel Duchamp, 1926)
2. A Sixth Part of the World (Dziga Vertov, 1926)
3. Impatience (Charles Dekeukeleire, 1928)
4. L'Étoile de mer (Man Ray, 1928)
5. Impressions of the Old Marseille Harbor (Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, 1929)
6. By Night With Torch and Spear (Joseph Cornell, 1930-1940)
7. Musical Poster no. 1 (Len Lye, 1940)
8. La Verifica Incerta (Gianfranco Baruchello, Alberto Grifi, 1964-1965)
9. The Flicker (Tony Conrad, 1966)
10. Word Movie (Fluxfilm 29) (Paul Sharits, 1966)
11. Sailboat (Joyce Wieland, 1967-1968)
12. Six films infinitésimaux et supertemporels (Maurice Lemaître, 1967-1975)
13. Saga (Jean-François Bory, 1968)
14. Still (Ernie Gehr, 1969-1971)
15. Au-delà de cette limite (Marcel Broodthaers, 1971)
16. Film About A Woman Who... (Yvonne Rainer, 1974)
17. Origin of the Night (Lothar Baumgarten, 1973-1977)
18. Every Revolution Is a Throw of the Dice (Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, 1977)
19. Light Reading (Lis Rhodes, 1978)
20. IKON-KINO (Timm Ulrichs,1969/1979)
21. Displaced Person (Daniel Eisenberg, 1981)
22. So Is This (Michael Snow, 1982)
23. Secondary Currents (Peter Rose, 1983)
24. Standard Gauge (Morgan Fisher, 1984)
Dedicated to cinema and the arts, MUBI Editions aims to broaden the horizons of what cinema-related publishing can be. It marks an exciting new chapter for MUBI, building on their long history of championing cinema culture through both film viewing and film publishing, and will publish globally across four core series: Projections, books exploring the world of film culture and history; Auteurs, books and art objects made in close collaboration with renowned artists and filmmakers; Internegatives, republications of rare, out-of-print, or newly translated texts and Lights!, books that explore and expand MUBI’s productions and releases. Through its distinctive range of titles, MUBI Editions intends to play a meaningful role in fostering a global community of engaged, art-loving viewers and readers—now and into the future. The second title from MUBI Editions will be published later in 2025.
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Inside spread: Read Frame Type Film
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Enrico Camporesi oversees the research activities of the Centre Pompidou film collection. He is the author of Futurs de l’obsolescence (Mimésis, 2018), a book on restoring artists’ films.
Catherine de Smet, professor at Université Paris 8, is a historian of art and graphic design. In addition to her work on Le Corbusier's editorial and curatorial activities, which has resulted in three books (2005, 2007, 2019), she has co-edited several books based on collective research, including Graphic Design: History in the Writing (with Sara De Bondt, 2014) and Études sur le collectif Grapus, 1970-1990 (with Béatrice Fraenkel, 2016). Her book Pour une critique du design graphique (2nd ed. 2020) brings together a selection of her essays on 20th and 21st century graphic design.
Philippe Millot is a graphic designer and typographer who teaches at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Since 2000, he has been a member of the Graphic International Alliance. His work has been acquired by the Centre National des Arts Plastiques and has also been shown in several exhibitions.
About MUBI
MUBI is a global streaming service, production company and film distributor dedicated to elevating great cinema. MUBI creates, curates, acquires and champions visionary films, bringing them to audiences all over the world.
MUBI is a place to discover ambitious films, from both iconic directors and emerging auteurs. All carefully chosen by MUBI’s curators. With MUBI GO, members in select countries can get a free ticket every week to see the best new films in cinemas. And Notebook explores all sides of cinema culture — both in print and online.
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