In Le Livre d’Image, Jean-Luc Godard recycles existing images (films, documentaries, paintings, television archives, etc.), quotes excerpts from books, uses fragments of music. The driving force is poetic rhyme, the association or opposition of ideas, the aesthetic spark through editing, the keystone. The author performs the work of a sculptor. The hand, for this, is essential. He praises it at the start. “There are the five fingers. The five senses. The five parts of the world (…). The true condition of man is to think with his hands. Jean-Luc Godard composes a dazzling syncopation of sequences, the surge of which evokes the violence of the flows of our contemporary screens, taken to a level of incandescence rarely achieved. Crowned at Cannes, the last Godard is a shock film, with twilight beauty.
Related Movies
The Statue of Giordano Bruno (2005)
This film was made out of the capture of a live animation performance presented in Rome in January 2005 by Pierre Hébert and the musician Bob Ostertag. It is based on live action shooting done that same afternoon on the Campo dei Fiori where the philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned by the Inquisition in 1600. A commemorative statue was erected in the 19th century, that somberly dominate the market held everyday on the piazza. The film is about the resurgence of the past in this place where normal daily activities go on imperturbably. The capture of the performance was reworked, shortened and complemented with more studio performances.
Alexa Boulton: Cinema (2023)
Alexa Boulton interviews the students and teachers of Kelvin High School to uncover the possibilities for the future of cinema
The Last Metro (1980)
In occupied Paris, an actress married to a Jewish theater owner must keep him hidden from the Nazis while doing both of their jobs.
to boyhood, i never knew him (2022)
Archive footage from 2006 - 2010 of a young girl growing up during the ages of four to eight. Only fragments of what is remembered exists. Words from a transgender man float to the surface as fleeting memories go on.
Breathless (1960)
A small-time thief steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he attempts to persuade a girl to run away to Italy with him.
Butterfly (2023)
A short experimental film, exploring the concept that one small change can have a profound impact on a person's life.
Ang Ipinagbabawal na Prutas ng Paraiso (2023)
An experimental film that explores the minds of a teenage couple experiencing an unintended pregnancy and their struggles with social pressure, discrimination, and abuse.
Barbara (1970)
Previously lost exploitation film which chronicles the sexual journey of a teenager who introduces her own family to the liberated ways of the free love rebellion.
Starlight (2024)
The line between isolation and creativity begins to blur for a group of teenagers. Some are free, some are not; but all have moments of passion and beauty.
The Last Cinema (NaN)
Cinema clerks Silva and Felix work the final night before their beloved cinema is demolished by private investors. An empty final screening allows them to reflect on the meaning of cinema in an age wherein art no longer occupies physical space.
Duration-Difference (2023)
Inspired by Lois Patiño's short movies project called "Paisaje-Duración" (Duration-Landscape) and Hiroshi Sugimoto's photo series "Seascapes", "Duração-Diferença" (Duration-Difference) reveals the difference through duration, through time; this short experimental movie seeks to capture, as Patiño and Sugimoto achived, the immanence as the entrance for something more - or something in between.
Before the Freeze (2023)
Before the freeze, there was beautiful garden. "Before the Freeze" is a short psychological thriller with experimental elements, about an overstressed, newly-single mother, her daughter, their dog, and what happens one afternoon when a friend comes over. "Before the Freeze" is Tenley E. Raj's debut film. Written, directed, shot, and edited and by Tenley E. Raj.
Paranoid Park (2007)
A teenage skateboarder becomes suspected of being connected with a security guard who suffered a brutal death in a skate park called "Paranoid Park".
The Cousins (1959)
Young provincial Charles arrives in Paris to stay with his cousin Paul while studying law. Paul is a decadent, bohemian pleasure-seeker who shows the meek, diligent Charles the thrills of city life. When Charles falls for Florence, one of Paul's acquaintances, relationships begin to shift.
The Long Voyage of the Yellow Bus (2023)
For this behemoth, Bressane took his opera omnia and edited it in an order that first adheres to historical chronology but soon starts to move backwards and forward. The various pasts – the 60s, the 80s, the 2000s – comment on each other in a way that sheds light on Bressane’s themes and obsessions, which become increasingly apparent and finally, a whole idea of cinema reveals itself to the curious and patient viewer. Will Bressane, from now on, rework The Long Voyage of the Yellow Bus when he makes another film? Is this his latest beginning? Why not, for the eternally young master maverick seems to embark on a maiden voyage with each and every new film!
The Colour of Words (1984)
This afterword to India Song (Duras' celebrated 1975 film) is organized in several parts. It begins with an interview to Marguerite Duras by Dominique Noguez, an expert in her work; the interview links the film to the two movies whom it's related to: The Ravishment of Lol V. Stein and The Vice-Consul. Several themes are tackled: childhood, autobiographical traces, relationships between differents characters and different films and more. India Song's main actors — Delphine Seyrig and Michael Lonsdale, who played Anne-Marie Stretter and the French vice-consul — join the conversation and talk about their roles and their craft. Marguerite Duras then evokes her memories of the shooting with the composer Carlos D'Alessio and her camera operato Bruno Nuytten. The conversations are punctuated by clips of the film.