Country: France
Year: 2004
Duration: 7' + 4'
Two film letters dedicated to the “refusniks,” the 5 young Israeli soldiers who were condemned for having refused to do their military service in the occupied territories as conscientious objectors. In the first, Godard shows the firing squad scene from his film Les Carabiniers (1963), in which a young girl recites a poem by Majakovskij before the firing squad and is accompanied by the song L’oppression by Leo Ferré. In the second letter, photographs about the Palestinian conflict and the idea of resistance (in particular Tienanmin Square) alternate with shots of a hand painting the star of David using the symbolic colors of Hebraism and Islam: blue and green. At the end, the following words appear: Berlin, Halt ein! Dein Tanzer ist der Tod (Berlin, stop! You are dancing with Death), from a song by the German Dadaist Walter Mehring, which becomes Jerusalem, Halt ein! Dein Tanzer ist der Tod. “Shot in video, the two works are a poetic collage of sounds and images, a concatenation of quotes, metaphors and symbols.” (Ariel Schweitzer)
Biography
film director
Jean-Luc Godard
(Paris, France, 1930 – Rolle, Switzerland, 2022) was one of the leading figures of the French New Wave, as well as one of the most radical and rigorous innovators of cinematic language. A tireless experimenter with forms, techniques and formats, he was a true thinker who used images to investigate the mechanisms of language, representation, speech and knowledge. A militant critic for Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1950s, he made his debut as a director with the epoch-making Breathless (1960) and from that moment on remained a point of reference for all filmmakers and film lovers around the world.
FILMOGRAFIA
Opération béton (cm 1954), Une femme coquette (cm, 1954), Tous les garçons s’appellent Patrick (cm, 1957), Charlotte et son Jules (1958), Une histoire d’eau (coregia François Truffaut, cm, 1958), À bout de souffle (Fino all’ultimo respiro, 1960), Une Femme est une femme (La donna è donna, 1961), Vivre sa vie (Questa è la mia vita, 1962), Le petit soldat (1963), Les Carabiniers (1963), Le Mépris (Il disprezzo, 1963), Bande à part (id., 1964), Une Femme mariée (Una donna sposata, 1964), Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (Agente Lemmy Caution: missione Alphaville, 1965), Pierrot le fou (Il bandito delle 11, 1965), Masculin féminin (Il maschio e la femmina, 1966), Made in USA (Una storia americana, 1966), Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elle (Due o tre cose che so di lei, 1967), La Chinoise (La cinese, 1967), Weekend (Week End - Una donna e un uomo da sabato a domenica, 1967), Le gai savoir (La gaia scienza, 1969), Le Vent d’est (Vento dell’est, 1969), Lotte in Italia (1971), Vladimir et Rosa (1970), Tout va bien (Crepa padrone, tutto va bene, 1972), Numéro deux (1975), Numéro deux (1975), Ici et ailleurs (1976), Six fois deux (tv, 1977), France, tour détour deux enfants, tv, 1977), Comment ça va? (1978), Sauve qui peut (la vie) (Si salvi chi può-La vita, 1980), Lettre à Freddy Buache (cm, 1982), Changer d’image (cm, 1982), Passion (id., 1982), Prénom Carmen (id., 1983), Je vous salue, Marie (id., 1985), Détective (Detective, 1985), Soigne ta droite (Cura la tua destra, 1987), Histoire(s) du cinéma (TV, 1989-1998), Nouvelle vague (id., 1990), Allemagne 90 neuf zéro (Germania nove zero, 1991), Hélas pour moi (1993), For Ever Mozart (1996), Éloge de l’amour (2001), Notre Musique (2004), Prières pour Refusniks I-II (cm, 2004) , Film socialisme (id., 2010), Adieu au langage (Addio al linguaggio, 2014), Le livre d’image (2018).