Jean-Luc Godard • Switzerland • 2018 • Does art inform reality, or vice versa?
Fragments of cinema, canonical and obscure, fill the frame. They appear acid-washed, saturated, disintegrating. Films by Roberto Rossellini, Abderrahmane Sissako, Ridley Scott—and Godard himself—feature scenes of war, torture, unmitigated brutality. Does art inform reality, or vice versa? A low, gravelly voice posits ontological inquiries into a medium that seeks to communicate, with varying degrees of success.
Casting his encyclopedic eye upon histories of violence that, ostensibly, remain inextricable from the medium itself, The Image Book is a dizzying, associative journey through one of the greatest cinematic minds of the century. Jean-Luc Godard’s film premiered at IFFR - International Film Festival Rotterdam, San Sebastián, Toronto and Cannes, where it won a Special Palme d’Or. The Image Book is a New York Times Critic's Pick.
Patricio Guzmán • Chile • 2014
Navigating Chile's colonial and political histories vis-à-vis its expansive waterways, The Pearl Button charts the labyrinths of individual and collective memory.
Andrey Zvyagintsev • Russia • 2003 • An enigmatic tour of terrain between adolescence and manhood.
Andrey and Ivan are young boys who have been raised almost entirely by their mother. While Andrey remembers his fa...
Bill Morrison • United States • 2021 • A meditative journey into Soviet history and film.
During the summer of 2016, a fishing boat off the shores of Iceland made a most curious catch—four reels of 35mm film, seemingly of Soviet provenance. The canister was preserved by hydrogen sulfide fumes fr...
