The Image Book
Jean-Luc Godard • 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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Emmanuel Laurent • France • 2010
Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut changed the face of cinema forever as members of the French New Wave. They also happened to be best friends. From the Cannes premiere of Truffaut’s The 400 Blows in 1959 to Godard’s Breathless the following year, to their tim...
