The Godard Project Rue du Premier-Film
Premiere
The Image Book
de Jean-Luc Godard
(and five other films)
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7TH, 2018
Jean-Luc Godard's new film, The Image Book (Le Livre d'Image), is set to premiere in France, following its screening in Cannes, where the jury, chaired by Cate Blanchett, awarded it a special Palme d'Or this past May.
Such a significant event precedes the ambitious project to be undertaken by the Institut Lumière in the months and years ahead: the entirety of Godard’s filmography, including his early shorts, shown on the screen of Rue du Premier-Film - 142 films in all! Lumière will begin with his most recent works, tracing the flow of the river back in time.
"There are the five senses, the five parts of the world, the five fingers of the fairy. Together, they compose the hand, and the true condition of man is to think with his hands.” This is how The Image Book opens, a film in six acts; the last of which depicts an escape to the Middle East. A er years devoted to his Histoire(s) de cinéma, Jean-Luc Godard continues his exploration down methodical paths, filled with images and sounds, quotations and gestures of admiration, questioning art, questioning the world.
Extracts from Histoire(s) du Cinéma (1988)
At the Lumière festival, The Image Book, presented with a special Palme d'Or in Cannes last May, will be accompanied by Godard's last four films, all of which reiterate how time, memories and History fuel reflection on the order and future of the world, and the place that cinema still manages to hold within it: Goodbye to Language (Adieu au langage, 2014), Film Socialisme (2010), Our Music (Notre Musique, 2004) and In Praise of Love (Éloge de l’amour, 2001). Lumière will also screen Histoire(s) du cinéma – Moments choisis, rarely shown on the big screen.
Éloge de l'amour (2001)
"No one has lived in the past," wrote Schopenhauer, whose name Godard included on the call sheets during the filming of Alphaville*. “No one will live in the future; the present is the form of all life; it is a possession that no evil can snatch from it.” Jean-Luc Godard's work is a series of enigmas, narrative flares and flashes of editing. It is also a poetry of quotations.
Autoportrait de Jean-Luc Godard, 2018
"We would go to the cinema to see what we could not see elsewhere," the filmmaker told us recently. The series will allow audiences to validate his claim. Consider also: an artist wants us to be interested in his works, a director wants us to see his films. "The Godard Project, Rue du Premier-Film," which opens in the fall of 2018, will welcome these 142 pieces of life and history, celluloid, silver-based and digital. It intends to trace the course of one of the most vigorous and dauntless rivers in the history of cinema, to emphasize how much Jean-Luc Godard has meant to our lives, always and forevermore.
“It will be,” wrote Balzac, who is also cited*, like "tearing words out of silence, and ideas out of the night."
Screenings in collaboration with Fabrice Aragno, Gaumont, Tamasa, Vega Film and Wild Bunch.
Thanks to Jean-Paul Battagia.
The Godard Project at the Lumière festival
Premiere The Image Book by Jean-Luc Godard (Le Livre d'image, 2018, 1h24)
In Praise of Love by Jean-Luc Godard (Éloge de l'amour, 2001, 1h37)
Our Music by Jean-Luc Godard (Notre musique, 2004, 1h20)
Histoire(s) du cinéma - Moments choisis by Jean-Luc Godard (2004, 1h20)
Film socialisme by Jean-Luc Godard (2010, 1h42)
Goodbye to Language 3D by Jean-Luc Godard (Adieu au langage 3D, 2014, 1h10)
