Films have been adapted in print from the very start of the medium and they continue to do so in different ways. Yet in the decade 1955–1965 the most popular adaptation format in Europe (first in Italy, then in France) was that of the film photonovel, strongly inspired by the success of the photonovel.

Reusing films stills and set pictures, film photonovels retell the complete story of a film in stories of approximatively 50 pages and 300 images, all of them with speech balloons for the dialogues and captions for the voice-over. They look like photonovels, but in practice their layout and narrative techniques are quite different.

The present exhibition gives an overview of the history and specific features of this longtime forgotten medium while also paying attention to the wide diversity of the magazines that published this paper equivalent of many great movies, American as well as European, of that era.

Curated by Jan Baetens

Free entry