A double screening of the latest works by two classics of avant-garde political cinema who have not in the least lost their revolutionary fervor. The Russian premiere of Jean-Luc Godard's The Image Book will be preceded by Jean-Marie Straub's short paying homage to Godard, based on a text by Georges Bernanos.
La France contre les robots
A new work from a legend of political cinema, dedicated to Jean-Luc Godard. First by night and then by day, Christophe Clavert reads excerpts from Georges Bernanos's La France contre les robots, which closes with the following words: "In short: regimes formerly opposed in ideology are now directly united by Technology. A world dominated by Technology is lost for Liberty."
The screening is in French with Russian subtitles.
La France contre les robots
Dir. Jean-Marie Straub
Switzerland, 2020. 10 min. 12+
The Image Book
The long-awaited Russian premiere of the latest work by the great iconoclast and innovator Jean-Luc Godard. The director received a Special Palme d'Or, the only one in the history of the Cannes Film Festival, for this film. As is always the case with Godard, it defies all comparison.
In a methodological continuation of his own Histoire(s) du cinéma cycle, Godard once again creates an intellectual collage of amateur videos, literary quotes, his favorite films, and classical music. The work is divided into several chapters, one of which is titled St. Petersburg's Evenings. As in his previous work, he is primarily interested in two things: the nature of the image and the logic of war, as well as images of war. While we have made sure that the Russian subtitles for the film are as detailed as possible, The Image Book is not some kind of brain teaser that needs to be solved. It is a stream that carries the viewer in its current or, as people might say on the internet, a mood. It is undoubtedly pessimistic, but militant all the same.
The screening is in Arab, English, French, and Italian with Russian subtitles.
The Image Book
Dir. Jean-Luc Godard
France, Switzerland, 2018. 184 min. 16+
