This installment of our Godard retrospective focuses on the period 1968 to 1979, when the French New Wave director turned to the problem of how to “make films politically.” It includes work made with Jean-Pierre Gorin under the banner The Dziga Vertov Group-Gorin joins us in person for an illustrated lecture and to introduce Ici et ailleurs-and experimental works made in collaboration with Anne-Marie Miéville in the 1970s. We conclude with Godard's “second first film,” Every Man for Himself; his return to narrative, Godard-style, is featured in the next installment of our series, which continues through April 2015.
Read full descriptionJean-Luc Godard (France/Switzerland, 1979). An achingly lyrical film about the selling of the self, Every Man for Himself follows a businessman's encounter with three prostitutes in a nameless Swiss city. With Isabelle Huppert and Nathalie Baye. (87 mins)
Jean-Luc Godard, Anne-Marie Miéville (France, 1978). A journalist making a video about his newspaper's production process discusses the rough cut with his collaborator, in Godard's work of deconstruction, both of cinema and its processes. (78 mins)
Jean-Luc Godard, Anne-Marie Miéville (France, 1975). New 35mm Print! Capitalism and sex, played out almost entirely in images of images. The first masterpiece of Godard's post-Maoist period, uses video to suggest social isolation yet is simultaneously visually entrancing. (88 mins)
Jean-Luc Godard, Anne-Marie Miéville, Jean-Pierre Gorin (France, 1976). Jean-Pierre Gorin in person. Godard, Gorin, and Anne-Marie Miéville's radical film, begun in 1970 as a documentary on the Palestinian struggle but completed in 1974 as a much more complex exploration of the ideological barriers between "here" and "elsewhere." (60 mins)
Jean-Pierre Gorin in person. In 1967 Gorin and Jean-Luc Godard launched the Dziga Vertov Group, a politically radical, experimental film collective that forged a new practice of filmmaking-and film viewing. (90 mins)
D.A. Pennebaker (US, 1971). Introduced by Tom Luddy. Images of Godard shooting in the US intercut with remnants of his abandoned American movie. "The footage that Pennebaker put together is wondrous" (New Yorker); it includes appearances by Rip Torn, Tom Hayden, Eldridge Cleaver, Jefferson Airplane, and Godard himself. (90 mins)
Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin (France, 1972). A deconstruction of a notorious news photograph of Jane Fonda surrounded by Vietnamese communists in Hanoi. Followed by Godard in America (Ralph Thanhauser, 1970), which tracks Godard and Gorin as they visit American campuses. (96 mins)
Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin (France, 1972). Introduced by Erik Ulman. Jane Fonda and Yves Montand star as unlikely leaders of a labor uprising. “The peak of Godard and Gorin's partnership, inspired by Jerry Lewis in general and The Ladies Man in particular” (Lincoln Center). (95 mins)
Jean-Luc Godard (UK, 1968). Digital Restoration! Godard follows the Rolling Stones as they work on a new album, intercutting those scenes with footage of the Black Panthers, Maoist hippies, and scenes of urban unrest. “A rock film with the immediacy of reportage from a war zone” (Guardian). (111 mins)