Once Upon a Time… Contempt

Jean-Luc Godard is synonymous with cinema. With the release of Breathless in 1960, he established himself overnight as a cinematic rebel and symbol for the era's progressive and anti-war youth. Sixty-two years and 140 films later, Godard is among the most renowned artists of all time, taught in every film school yet still shrouded in mystery. One of the founders of the French New Wave, political agitator, revolutionary misanthrope, film theorist and critic, the list of his descriptors goes on and on. Godard Cinema offers an opportunity for film lovers to look back at his career and the subjects and themes that obsessed him, while paying tribute to the ineffable essence of the most revered French director of all time.

Here and Elsewhere takes its name from the contrasting footage it shows of the fedayeen and of a French family watching television at home. Originally shot by the Dziga Vertov Group as a film on Palestinian freedom fighters, Godard later reworked the material alongside Anne-Marie Miéville.

Godard by Godard is an archival self-portrait of Jean-Luc Godard. It retraces the unique and unheard-of path, made up of sudden detours and dramatic returns, of a filmmaker who never looks back on his past, never makes the same film twice, and tirelessly pursues his research, in a truly inexhaustible diversity of inspiration. Through Godard’s words, his gaze and his work, the film tells the story of a life of cinema; that of a man who will always demand a lot of himself and his art, to the point of merging with it.

In 2009, in a small theater in Geneva, Switzerland, the film directors Marcel Ophuls and Jean-Luc Godard met for an unusual, surprisngly intimate and sometimes contentious dialogue with each other in front of a live audience. Luckily for us, it was filmed.

In Le Livre d’Image, Jean-Luc Godard recycles existing images (films, documentaries, paintings, television archives, etc.), quotes excerpts from books, uses fragments of music. The driving force is poetic rhyme, the association or opposition of ideas, the aesthetic spark through editing, the keystone. The author performs the work of a sculptor. The hand, for this, is essential. He praises it at the start. “There are the five fingers. The five senses. The five parts of the world (…). The true condition of man is to think with his hands. Jean-Luc Godard composes a dazzling syncopation of sequences, the surge of which evokes the violence of the flows of our contemporary screens, taken to a level of incandescence rarely achieved. Crowned at Cannes, the last Godard is a shock film, with twilight beauty.

Life isn't a Godard Film

Three people get together to read the play that one of them wrote; a play that recounts the love that these three experienced in the past. But perhaps not everything is as it is written there, perhaps not everything - or almost nothing - was like that.

HE is an ACTOR, SHE is an ACTRESS... But this... Is not important to the story.

L'Idiot follows Rajat "Rinku" Chaddha, an awkward, daydreaming young man obsessed with French culture, as he attempts to win over Mona, a charismatic girl in his French class. With the help of a local thief, Rinku devises a plan to become Mona's hero, but things take an unexpected turn, forcing him to confront his fantasies and reality.

Seàn-Liqué Bleùharde's latest New-New Wave experiment invites the audience to question not just what they’re watching — but when. Shot on stark black & white 16mm film, this is post-silence cinema at its most profound.

Sanning/Lögn

A couple in a long-distance relationship reunite for a road trip through Sri Lanka. Things go awry.

O Doce Sal dos Seus Fadigosos Lábios

Rebels on the surface, retrogrades in essence. “The Ridiculists”, a duo composed of the eccentric and explosive, “The Ridiculer”, and his faithful squirer, “The Talker”, roam through the Brazilian capital breaking into homes, committing murders, as they create a legion of blind supporters along the way.

l'eau tonne à minuit

A letter, received by the Finnish National Radio’s phone-in program, hopes that in this era of #metoo and many other well-meaning campaigns, attention will be drawn to an unpleasant phenomenon, the use of the name Urpo as a synonym for idiot. In this warm-hearted and humorous documentary, four men called Urpo gather to reflect on the meaning and impact of their name on their lives. Is the use of Urpo still decent in 2023?

A documentary of the German national soccer team’s 2006 World Cup experience that changed the face of modern Germany.

Riding Giants is story about big wave surfers who have become heroes and legends in their sport. Directed by the skateboard guru Stacy Peralta.

The American comedian/actor delivers a story about the alternative Hip Hop scene. A small town Ohio mans moves to Brooklyn, New York, to throw an unprecedented block party.

The story behind the rise and fall of New York's 42nd Street. The cinemas, the films, the people, the crime and the rebirth of the block as "New 42nd Street" - this is the document of the world's most notorious movie strip.