story(ies) of Cinema). Godard mourns the death of cinema and chronicles its vitality in the dazzling video series Histoire(s) du cinéma. Histoire(s) du cinema emphasizes the influence film exercises on viewers-the impact of an image, the different realities that it provides, and the various frames of mind it engenders. Godard's purpose in these elliptical, epigrammatic montage essays is, he says, "to show that the history of film is, first of all, not history but consisting of histories. And then show that all histories are intertwined with the history of the twentieth century....Not showing a chronological order, names or dates, but a gust of wind, starting from the basic idea that the entire twentieth century was the stage for a merciless fight between image and sound (the newborn) and word (the grown–up, the government)."

Chapter 3(a), La Monnaie de l'absolu (The Coin of the Absolute) (26 mins). Chapter 3(b), Une Vague Nouvelle (A New Wave) (27 mins). Chapter 4(a), Le Côntrole de l'univers (The Control of the Universe) (27 mins). Chapter 4(b), Les Signes parmi nous (The Signs Among Us) (37 mins).