Hollis Frampton | Poetic Justice

Hollis Frampton

Poetic Justice

Rochester, USA: Visual Studies Workshop, 1973

[unpaginated], 13.3 × 21.3 cm., softcover

Edition of 150 signed and unnumbered copies

Hapax Legomena is a seven-part film cycle by filmmaker Hollis Frampton, who considers the series to be "a single work composed of detachable parts, each of which may be seen separately for its own qualities." 'Hapax Legomena' translates to "things said one time."

Poetic Justice (1972) is the second in the series, following Nostalgia (1971), and followed by Critical Mass, Travelling Matte, Ordinary Matter, Remote Control and Special Effects. 

The film is a continuous static shot of a stack of papers, on a table next to a plant and a cup of coffee. Page after page is placed on top of each other, forming a script that tells a surreal story.

In an interview Film Culture magazine, Frampton said that the idea of turning the film into a bookwork came from Nathan and Joan Lyons. 

"This book swims upstream, to the place where it was spawned. Twenty years ago, when I disbelieved that it would ever be given me to make films, and when I was a lowercase surrealist, and when I disbelieved that film-making started, like making love by telephone, with a script...I wrote films scripts. Later, it came time to make a work in seven parts, of which 'Poetic Justice' is the uncomfortable (it doesn't move) second, and to recapitulate some of the history of film art as though it were my like to recollect..." 

- Hollis Frampton