Jean-Luc Godard: Expect Everything from Cinema

9/12/14 to 10/23/14

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.

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Past Films

Every Man for Himself
- Thursday, October 23 7:00 PM
Jean-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)
[no title]
- Thursday, October 23
Comment ça va
- Sunday, October 5 5:00 PM
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)
Numéro deux
- Thursday, October 2 7:00 PM
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)
Ici et ailleurs
- Thursday, September 25 7:00 PM
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)
The Dziga Vertov Group: Lecture with Clips by Jean-Pierre Gorin
- Wednesday, September 24 7:00 PM
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)
One P.M.
- Sunday, September 21 5:00 PM
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)
Letter to Jane: An Investigation of a Still
- Sunday, September 21 7:00 PM
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)
Tout va bien
- Thursday, September 18 7:00 PM
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)
Sympathy for the Devil
- Friday, September 12 7:00 PM
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)

Jean-Luc Godard: Expect Everything from Cinema

9/12/14 to 10/23/14

We concluded the first part of our tribute to Jean-Luc Godard in April with his films from 1967, La Chinoise and Weekend, bold ideological critiques that explored revolutionary politics and declared the “end of cinema.” For this second half of our tribute, which continues through April 2015, we pick up with films made in the aftermath of May ‘68. Godard's investigations into cinema had already rejected the illusion of narrative; now he turned to the problem of how to “make films politically.” He joined up with the young French critic and journalist Jean-Pierre Gorin and made a series of films under the banner of the Dziga Vertov Group. Inspired by their Soviet namesake, they invented a “new” cinema, combining radical aesthetics with radical politics to investigate the “new” reality-whether focusing on the struggles of the Palestinians and the Black Panthers, or on the production and consumption of culture. We are honored that Jean-Pierre Gorin will discuss the Dziga Vertov Group on September 24 and will return the next evening to present Ici et ailleurs. Godard continued to experiment with sound and image in collaboration with Anne-Marie Miéville, incorporating the relatively new medium of video in Numéro deux and Comment ça va in the mid-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.

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We are indebted to Kent Jones and Jacob Perlin, as well as Isa Cucinotta, at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, where a Godard retrospective recently took place at the 51st New York Film Festival, as well to James Quandt at TIFF Cinematheque, which hosts a Godard retrospective this year. We also wish to thank French Cultural Services, New York, and the French Consulate San Francisco.