special screening: godard's passion november 4, 1999

box office and ticket information | calendar presented by David Sterritt, author of: The Films of Jean-Luc Godard: Seeing the Invisible This newly published book by film critic David Sterritt examines the work of one of the most versatile and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. With a career ranging from France's revolutionary New Wave movement in the early 1960s, through a period of drastic political experimentation in the late 1960s and 1970s, to a current introspective period in which he explores issues of spirituality, sexuality, and the aesthetics of sound, image, and montage, Godard defies easy categorization. In this study, Mr. Sterritt offers an introductory overview of Godard's work as a critic, filmmaker, and video artist. He then traces Godard's visionary ideas through six of his key films: Breathless, My Life to Live, Weekend, Numero deux, Hail Mary, and Nouvelle vague. Also included is a concise analysis of his work in video, television, and mixed-media formats. Linking works by Godard to key social and cultural developments, The Films of Jean-Luc Godard explains their importance in modernist and postmodernist art of the last half century. (Cambridge University Press) Special Screening: PASSION Jean-Luc Godard, Switzerland/France, 1982; 87m "A wonderfully elliptical, beautiful film about movie-making, art, life and love, PASSION is 'about' a Polish film director (Jerzy Radziwilowicz) re-creating in tableaux vivants masterpieces by Goya, Rembrandt, El Greco and others. The director is criticized by his film's backers for lacking a story (the film-within-a-film has no story because before you can film one you have to live it), though a number of offscreen dramas unfold among the characters working on the film-but Godard keeps them all at enough distance that they can't take over his deconstructed narrative. Typically, Godard calls upon the elements of filmmaking, painting, classical music, sex and religion as if they were passionate forces of nature, and then arranges them so that their powers are their very point. PASSION isn't one of those ordinary, lightly accessible valentines to the art of making movies, but it has more fervor for the form than most directors could ever dream of. With the incomparable cinematography of Raoul Coutard, and starring Hanna Schygulla, Michel Piccoli and Isabelle Huppert." - Tom Keogh With Scénario du film Passion (1982; video, 60m): Godard constructs a poetic video study of the cinematic and creative process by deconstructing the story of his 1982 film. Mr. Sterritt will introduce the 7 pm screening, present a Q & A after the films, and sign his book in the WRT gallery. Thurs Nov 4: 7 pm