The Image Book
Filmatique at NYFF • 1h 24m
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.
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