JEAN-LUC GODARD & ANNE-MARIE MIÉVILLE - AU-DELÀ DE L'IMAGE

To Jean-Luc Godard (1930, F/CH) cinema is not merely the main 20th century art form, it also embodies its essence. Video, however, in his mind more similar to painting, is exclusively at the service of criticism. Since the end of the seventies he has engaged himself more and more explicitly with the fringe area between cinema, video and photography. This resulted in a series of video essays in which he, along with Anne-Marie Miéville, questions the connections between art, society and history. He draws from a rich archive of cinematic images and found footage, weaving a tight web of literary, philosophical and cinematographic references and quotations. It is used as a substructure for personal reflections on history, memory and cinema. Equally melancholic as they are ironic, the recent videos in this programme outline a trajectory of ephemeral traces and distorted recollections, a trip through detached images and sounds and half-forgotten history, with a reflection of a restless course of life.

Jean-Luc Godard & Anne-Marie Miéville, T he Old Place, Small Notes Regarding the Arts at Fall of the 20th Century
1999, col./BW, French (no subt.), 45’
An essay on the role of the fine arts at the end of the 20th Century. Incorporating a wide variety of imagery, including original nature footage shot for the video, film clips from various periods of cinematic history, and famous photographs from around the world, Godard and Miéville also quote from a textual sources, including the writings of Simone de Beauvoir, Thomas Mann, Henri Bergson, Jorge Luis Borges, and many more.

Jean-Luc Godard , De L’Origine du XXIème Siécle: À La Recherche du Siècle Perdu
2000, col./BW, French (no subt.), 13’
Commissioned by the heads of the 2000 Cannes Film Festival to make an opening-night short commemorating cinema as it enters its second full century, Godard instead offers up a 17-minute barrage of re-edited footage of wars and Nazi atrocities, interspersed with scenes from such films as The Shining by Stanley Kubrick, Gigi by Vincente Minelli, Le Plaisir by Max Ophüls, and his own Àbout de souffle.

Jean-Luc Godard & Anne-Marie Miéville, Liberté et patrie
2002, col./BW, Frans/Français (geen ond./non s.-t.), 22’
Commissioned by The Swiss Arteplage Mobile du Jura (AMJ). A beautiful, funny video-essay celebrating the landscapes and skies of the Vaud Canton, a region of Switzerland that is a country unto itself-Godard calls France "its Other."

Jean-Luc Godard & Anne-Marie Miéville , Dans le noir du temps
2003, col./BW, French (no subt.), 11’