Histories of cinema

Posté le 18.10.2018 à 12h29

The theater of Rue du Premier-Film was packed for the screening of The Image Book, the great French director’s new film. Since the year 2000, Jean-Luc Godard has brought out films that respond to each other like fragmented echoes; these 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 pieces form a single image.

1
 "And what is it called? Something of love. Praise, I believe.” Dear to Stendhal, Godard spoke of love in a powerful way, with sentimentality and so differently. "Here's an old man!" proclaims a quiet character of In Praise of Love, who knows how to recognize the old, the young, but wonders how to recognize adults. How to recognize them? In Praise of Love is exceptional, tracking memory without measuring time.

Un bar aux Folies Bergère de Edouard Manet

2 "Time does not exist. Everything overlaps. Everything starts again because we do not observe sufficiently, not enough. We recite, however. We have been repeating for centuries. So what does memory do?" Our Music responds to In Praise of Love and advances it further. It projects a lit bulb in the dark, which oscillates from one point to another, like in The Raven by Clouzot. A back and forth that asks: where is the light? Where is the darkness?

3
 "I know what you're thinking." Before cinema, there was painting. One point of view per image. "I know what you're thinking." It is the amusing phrase reflected in the eyes of the women painted by genius Edouard Manet. Reading this sentence, we search for the look in the eyes of these girls. Their inner thoughts. Cinema begins there. Histoire(s) du cinéma.

Olympia de Edouard Manet


4 Histoire(s) du cinéma resurfaces in Film socialisme with its sensational video colors that bind and connect everything.

5 The images are a communion. They praise the fine hairs on the bodies of naked women, dogs, unconditional love. A Goodbye to Language.

Berthe Morisot au bouquet de violettes de Edouard Manet

6 "I'm not sad that you're leaving. I am not in love with you. I do not love you dearly." In Praise of Love returns in The Image Book, the cinema child of Max Ophuls. Godard adds, "If you sleep, if you dream, accept your dreams, it is the role of the sleeper." Come see, hear and dream the world of JLG.

Virginie Apiou