Jean Luc Godard is 77
Happy Birthday Jean Luc Godard! He is 77 years old today.
JLG’s contribution to cigarette ad.
Nicodemus asks him whether Anne-Marie Miéville will be involved in his next project.
Godard: She’ll absolutely be involved in the next film. We imagine the film together. We call it forth into memory. It’s as if clouds were, bit by bit, slowly taking shape. That’s why I work best when I doze in my chair.
Godard: I try to see things. With my eyes closed. Because you don’t see the same thing with your eyes open. It’s not any different with a camera. You use open eyes to see with closed eyes. (via)
Long before Bela Tarr, watch JLG’s famous long single-take tracking shots.
Weekend (on Youtube)
(This is a repost, music by George Delerue ).
Dans le noir du temps – Part of 10 Minutes older – Cello 2007
Godard stole money to finance his films. He was honored at the European film festival with the lifetime achievment award.
Godard: And when it comes to the American DVDs, I always break off at the moment when I figure out how they’re going to give the story a happy end after all. This dogged insistence on happy endings – I admire it quite a lot. And I’m like everyone else. I’d rather watch a bad American film than a bad Norwegian film. (via)
Hal Hartley interviews Godard in 1994
HH: What changes will occur if that matter, the film, goes away and we begin seeing electronically? Will it change the way we look?
JLG: I won’t be there. It will be new. I don’t know. I like it when it’s new, but the way it’s going is not that kind of newness. It’s bureaucracy. I mean, Hollywood was invented by hoodlums from central Europe. And today a Hollywood lawyer is not a hoodlum. He’s a bureaucrat.