The Image Book

Winner of the first Special Palme d’Or award in the history of the Cannes Film Festival, The Image Book is an essay film by one of cinema’s great visionaries, Jean-Luc Godard. Using a non-narrative flow of images drawn largely from the history of the moving image, but referencing also the tradition of painting, Godard projects a worldview of deep sadness—often showing us a world torn apart by violence. His formal strategy alters the picture by skewing saturation and resolution; his voiceover narration guides us through his ontological inquiry. Provocative, visceral, demanding, this late work questions the nature of the image, be it made by the hand of the artist, by the filmmaker, or in the name of political propaganda.