Jean-Luc Godard

Quote:

Vladimir and Rosa was in many ways the last true product of the experimental revolutionary filmmaking cooperative the Dziga Vertov Group: the final film produced under the group’s banner before Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin went on to make the feature Tout va bien and the short Letter To Jane under their own names, before parting ways for good. Taking its title from Vladimir Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg, this film is typical of Godard and Gorin’s late 60s/early 70s collaborations. That is to say, it’s shrill, antagonistic, messy and often intentionally grating, as dense and complex as it is difficult and polemical. Read More »

Quote:
During the 1970’s Jean Luc Godard abandoned the notion of making normal commercial films for cinematic distribution in favour of his Marxist-Leninist ‘Dziga Vertov’ propaganda films. The director returned to regular filmmaking in 1980 with Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie), his first theatrical release since his furious outburst against modern bourgeois society in 1967 with Weekend. Delivering another hate-filled attack on almost every aspect of modern society, it’s like he had never been away.Read More »

IMDB wrote:
Nothing but silence.
Nothing but a revolutionary song.
A story in five chapters like the five fingers of a hand.Read More »

SYNOPSIS:
Petty thug Michel panics and impulsively kills a policeman while driving a stolen car. On the lam, he turns to his aspiring journalist girlfriend Patricia, hiding out in her Paris apartment. When Patricia learns that Michel is being investigated for murder, she begins to question her loyalties.Read More »

Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader wrote:
Soft and Hard (A Soft Conversation Between Two Friends on a Hard Subject)
Soft and Hard, a highly intimate 48-minute video made by Godard and Anne-Marie Mieville for English television three years later, shows Godard and Mieville at their home in rural Switzerland. In many ways the most intimate and domestic of Godard’s works, it broaches the matter of what distinguishes film from video. Can be viewed in retrospect as necessary preludes to his recently completed magnum opus, the eight-part Histoire(s) du cinema.Read More »

13 European directors explore the theme of Sarajevo and what this city represents in European history over the past hundred years, and what Sarajevo incarnates today in Europe. From different generations and origins, these eminent filmmakers offer many singular styles and visions. François Schuiten, famous Belgian comic book artist (Cities of the Fantastic) imagined animated cartoon links in between these films, a metaphoric transposition in his graphically luxuriant world of the emblematic bridges of the city of Sarajevo.Read More »

A woman, a child, a man and another child, the noise of bombs falling and of planes passing by, in a urban landscape destroyed by war.
A man dies before he had time to write on the back of La liberté guidant le peuple de Delacroix: that could be the plot, just the enigma consisting of a missing word. A question opened before death, resolved by a child, the shadow and spirit of Gavroche.Read More »

NYT wrote:
Cinematic visionary and provocateur Jean-Luc Godard offers a typically challenging look at his favorite creative medium in the wake of the 20th Century in this ambitious blend of film, video, and collage. Moments Choisis des Histoire(s) du Cinema serves as both a history and critical examination of the cinema in the form of a collection of “chosen moments” from films that may or may not exist. It also offers a self-reflexive analysis of the filmmaker’s own life and work. Moments Choisis des Histoire(s) du Cinema received its American premier in a special screening at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. ~ Mark Deming, RoviRead More »

During the Algerian War, Bruno Forestier lives in Geneva to escape the enlistment in France. Working for French intelligence, he is ordered to kill Palivoda, who is pro-FLN (National Liberation Front of Algeria), to prove he is not a double agent. Refusal and hesitation keep him from carrying out the assassination.

Meanwhile, he meets and falls in love with Véronica Dreyer, who helped the FLN. Bruno plans to leave with her for Brazil, but is captured and tortured by Algerian revolutionaries.

He escapes, and agrees to kill Palivoda for the French in exchange for passage to Brazil for himself and Veronica. However, the French discover Veronica’s ties to the FLN, and torture her to death. (Wikipedia)Read More »