L'Hypergonar

Directed by Henri Chrétien

An anthology of tests of the Hypergonar system, ancestor of the CinemaScope, invented late in the 1920s by French astronomer Henri Chrétien. Anamorphosis-- That is, the deforming an image and then straightening it using a suitable mirror-- was once a popular curiosity. Henri Chrétien imagined lenses that make it possible to anamorphose the image when shooting, then to de-anamorphose it when projecting. Shot by Chrétien between 1938 and 1949, "Vues Hypergonées", as the film is also known, was restored in 1999 by the French Cinémathèque from a 269-meter nitrate copy, for the retrospective “Jeune, Dure et Pure! A history of avant-garde and experimental cinema in France".