In Praise of Love

In Praise of Love 2001

6.40

Someone we hear talking - but whom we do not see - speaks of a project which describes the four key moments of love: meeting, physical passion, arguments/separation and making up. This project is to be told through three couples: young, adult and old. We do not know if the project is for a play, a film, a novel or an opera. The author of the project is always accompanied by a kind of servant. Meanwhile, two years earlier, an American civil servant meets with an elderly French couple who had fought in the Resistance during World War II, brokering a deal with a Hollywood director to buy the rights to tell their story. The members of the old couple's family discuss heatedly questions of nation, memory and history.

2001

Oh, Woe Is Me

Oh, Woe Is Me 1993

6.43

This complex allegorical tale tells the story of man’s quest for spiritual meaning. When God enters the body of 1980s filmmaker Simon Donnadieu, his wife Rachel realizes that something has gone awry, but chooses to remain faithful to her erratically-behaving husband.

1993

Nouvelle Vague

Nouvelle Vague 1990

6.20

Composed entirely of literary quotations from many different sources and from several historical periods, the loose narrative concerns a drifter found by a rich woman who soon falls in love with him. A drowning accident takes place and the drifter dies, but some time later he reappears in the woman’s life looking for a job. Or could it be the man’s twin brother?

1990

Hail, Sarajevo

Hail, Sarajevo 1993

6.80

A short two-minute rumination on the once volatile situation during the period of the Bosnian War presented in the form of a photo-montage with accompanying text.

1993

Our Music

Our Music 2004

6.70

A three-chapter (Hell, Purgatory and Paradise) meditation on the city of Sarajevo in the wake of the Bosnian war, on Palestine and Israel, and on war itself.

2004

After the Reconciliation

After the Reconciliation 2000

7.10

An elderly couple and a younger man and woman follow up failed seduction attempts with conversation about love and the meaning of life.

2000

In the Darkness of Time

In the Darkness of Time 2002

7.20

Conceived as a reflection on the theme of time at the turn of the millennium, "Dans le noir du temps" functions as a Pandora’s box which hides all the horrors of the world: the last moments of youth, fame, thoughts, memory, love, silence, history, fear, eternity and, of course, cinema.

2002

Don't Forget You're Going to Die

Don't Forget You're Going to Die 1996

6.80

Benoit has his life all planned out before him. Unfortunately, he had totally forgotten to include his military service. Inevitably called into duty, he tries everything he can to avoid it, eventually launching into a hedonistic lifestyle—out of control with drugs, alcohol, and nightclubs.

1996

JLG/JLG: Self-Portrait in December

JLG/JLG: Self-Portrait in December 1995

6.10

Director Jean-Luc Godard reflects in this movie about his place in film history, the interaction of film industry and film as art, as well as the act of creating art.

1995

For Ever Mozart

For Ever Mozart 1996

6.00

Episodic film that follows a theater troupe from France attempting to put on a play in Sarajevo. Along their journey they are captured and held in a POW camp, and they call for help from their friends and relations in France.

1996

Sang titre

Sang titre 2020

8.00

A special version of ‘Dans le noir du temps’ for viewers in Ramallah and the Gaza Strip.

2020

The Old Place

The Old Place 2000

5.80

Essay on the influence of arts at the end of the 20th century produced by the Museum of Modern Art.

2000

We're All Still Here

We're All Still Here 1997

7.00

Two housewives discuss philosophical themes (actually an updated dialogue between Plato and Socrates) while doing the house work. The husband of one of them rehearses his part in a theatrical play, reading a 20th century philosophical text about totalitarianism.

1997

Liberty and Homeland

Liberty and Homeland 2002

5.70

The title of this twenty-minute video by Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville, “Freedom and Fatherland,” is the official slogan of the Canton de Vaud, in Switzerland, where the filmmakers live and grew up. To fulfill their commission from a Swiss cultural festival, they adapted a great Swiss novel, “Aimé Pache, Painter from the Vaud,” by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz, from 1911 (about a local artist who goes to Paris for his education and then returns home) and extruded its autobiographical analogies to Godard’s own life and work. Using a choice set of clips from Godard’s films to coincide with events from the painter’s life, verbal references to modern times and to Godard’s own—Sartre, the late nineteen-sixties, the cinema—and images of the Swiss terrain, which plays a decisive role in the work of Pache, Godard, and Miéville (an important filmmaker in her own right), they produce the effect of mirrors within mirrors.

2002

Adieu au TNS

Adieu au TNS 1998

4.00

In 1998, Jean-Luc Godard made a short video entitled Adieu au TNS (Farewell to the TNS). Never released (or intended to be), the video is nearly impossible to see and has not been included in any Godard retrospectives to date.

1998

Lou Didn't Say No

Lou Didn't Say No 1994

7.30

Moments and aspects of the life of a contemporary married couple undergoing a metamorphosis.

1994