Letter to Jane is the last collaboration between Godard and Gorin. It's content consists of the two analyzing a single image of Fonda in Vietnam.
J Hoberman says of the film, "Narrated by the filmmakers and condescendingly addressed to "you, Jane," Letter poses the same question as Tout Va Bien, namely the role of the movie star in the revolutionary struggle. Alternately brilliant and obtuse, the film's disingenuous analysis assumes Fonda as author of the photograph - responsible for everything from the camera angle to the caption that erroneously describes her as asking a question." (Criterion)
While one could pose a Levinasian argument that to experience the radical alterity of the Other is to automatically be in a stance of asking a question (or at the very least waiting for an answer), what I think is truly interesting in this film is G & G's singular focus on one image and how they slowly inscribe upon it a meaning. It is a unique experience to watch Godard derive meaning from a single image versus a series of them.
I intended to write on performance art and Situationist events, however, my focus was drawn towards something much more meaningful regarding my own actions and practice: the genre of dance that you can call experimental, postmodern or actually post-postmodern or whatever time it is that we are now moving through in dance (“contemporary” is not appropriate because this refers to ballet-trained dancers performing classically derived structures of modern dance [Graham, Cunningham, Horton technique, etc.]). For the sake of this discourse I will simply label this genre of dance “experimental.” In general, this genre of dance performance produces an exploration of individual authorship. It is an open text of interpretation, a proximal experience to encounter and sense, rather than a rational connection of A+B=C. Certainly there are motivations and sourced references through which a dance artist generates material, however, rarely are there clear narrative structures that cojole the audience through a storyline. And very rarely are there coherent “arcs” of drama to follow and expect. Don’t expect. Experience. Often these performances can be incredibly challenging to experience especially when a viewer is searching for a coherent “meaning” within the trajectory of the piece. An experimental dance piece is what and how you open yourself to experience through its formulation and dematerialization of time. It impresses through the true spontaneity of its actions- actions that never again repeat identically (if they repeat at all). These are a few of the reason for which I am drawn to the practice and contemplation of this genre of movement experience other than the fact that for unknown reasons, dance is intrinsically central to my physicality. In my own performance viewing and in my improvisational practice I approach the open textuality of experimental dance through the gesture and movement of the body. I am instantaneously imprinted and I also recognize how unattainable the experience is (in viewing a performance and in my own experience of improvising). Just yesterday I was in a grungy, cold dance studio with several other dance artists and we were individually improvising through cellular initiation (the work is called BMC or Body-Mind-Centering [a little eccentric but very exploratory]) and I thought of all the great material (dancing) that I was generating and that I would never see it or even be able to repeat in the way that I was feeling. It was completely spontaneous. Dance without a camera is a completely objectless form that begins and ends with the body in time, even Labanotation is problematic. Without documentation (especially the moving image) dance ceases to exist and though the vibrational experience of its particulate matter may remain for a fraction of time, the vibration rapidly dissipates.
And so, more concretely how can aspects of experimental dance coincide with the idea of the “situation/event/moment” of the Situationists? Experimental dance is an urban form of art-making that seizes the moment and enables an intimacy of art and life in unique and intangible ways. It drifts or crashes in, sometimes spontaneously, through performance and practice, and it drifts or crashes away. Experimental dance-makers differ from more mainstream dance companies that retain and re-enact a repertoire of pieces. Many experimental performances occur once, or twice or maybe three times. Most often, experimental dance performances in New York City materialize in small-scale venues such as Judson Church, St. Mark’s Church, The Kitchen, The Chocolate Factory or Dixon Place (as examples) and disappear quickly. These performances provide a mapping of New York City that emerges with the body and disperses with time. And most importantly, experimental dance resists objectified commodification. It rests on the periphery of the Culture Industry and is only now emerging within the forum of YouTube and company or dance-artist websites. Even in these streamed representations the mystery of a dance-maker’s work is often retained lest someone appropriate the material. The images are usually still photographs in comparison to moving clips. (The exception here is the material posted by Movement Research at Judson Church). The Author is primal in this territory of originality. And further, a dance-maker’s work must be retained- principally because it cannot be purchased other than through a viewing. Unlike performance art, dance is generally not for retail sale (other than works being “set” on another company for example) and experimental dance does not exist within capitalist system unlike more mainstream works like those of Twyla Tharp or Mark Morris, for example. Performance art, once a revolutionary event, soon evolved into a commodity as exemplified by price tags of the products of Tino Sehgal and Marina Abramovic (Sehgal sold his piece The Kiss to The Guggenheim for somewhere around $100,000 and Abramovic has a veritable empire of limited edition photographic prints that cost upwards of $60,000 per print [thanks to the genius marketing of the Sean Kelly Gallery] and numerous books for those of us who are less affluent). Therefore, if one pursues dance, it is an act of pure love and desire. The love and the labor are intimate companions although the labor rarely sustains the artist and thus many dancers work other jobs to survive. They are our servers, massage therapists, bartenders, and hair salon workers (a dancer from Stephen Petronio’s company answers phones and sweeps up hair in the salon where I get my hair cut). And further, in the United States dance is the most under-funded of all of the arts.
Returning to the concept of the open text of experimental dance, I feel there is a very strong Brechtian influence in dance that began with the Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s. This is the official beginning of “postmodern” dance and a time when dance movement was truly deconstructed and engaged the audience in a way that subverted the expectation for a story or a dramatic “arc.” This creative movement was truly revolutionary and much of the work produced today in experimental dance is a clear extension of Judson Dance Theater’s provocations towards movement, engagement, audience experience and the “stimulation of the audience beyond passive consumption” (quote from class) and into the realm of critical engagement as well as authorship.
Here are two clips I found on YouTube that, for me, represent the idea of “experimental dance” as an open text. Both of these works are performed with music- I recommend watching the clips 1st without the music and then with. The music is melodic and can mask the intricacies of the movement. Though I admire both of these pieces very much, they are shorter in length and not as challenging as other examples experimental dance work that exists. This is an example of the limitations of accessing dance-artists’ work (even in this age of technology!).
Clip 1 is a solo entitled “Business of Bloom,” choreographed and performed by Jodi Melnick, a truly virtuosic dancer. I have admired her work and presence since I first took class from her at Sarah Lawrence College ten or so years ago. The background and the stage form a perfect set (as you will see). This is a perfect “straight” document of dance in a long, immobile take. Clip 1 is from a dance festival so it’s a more commercial venue in comparison to an alternate NYC venue .
Clip 2 is an excerpt of duet by Jen Rosenblit/Bottom Heavy Productions with Addys Gonzales entitle "That Sick Sound" with live musical accompaniment. This was performed at Judson Church. I respect Jen’s work very much. As a side note, we just worked on a movement-based film together that I am currently editing with special attention to this notion of the moving and still image/body.
& this is a still from the film I am working on tentatively titled Drop Still.
Since I know next to nothing of this period of Godard's work, I can't really say anything about this. Hopefully Brody won't be linking the film to Godard's inner turmoil over his break up with Karina some 20 years prior.
Wanted to share it anyway, as there seems to be many Godard films playing as of late!
Introduced by Richard Brody, New Yorker film critic and author of the book Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard.
“Godard’s 1987 adaptation of King Lear may well be his greatest film; it is, at least, the one that condenses the greatest number of his ideas, styles, and obsessions.”
—Richard Brody
A characteristically skewed take on its source material, Godard’s haunting meditation on personal and cultural dissolution follows William Shakespeare Jr. the Fifth (theater director Peter Sellars) as he searches out his ancestor’s work after a nuclear disaster. Godard systematically subverts Cannon’s expectations of a bankable prestige picture—the improbable cast includes Norman Mailer, Woody Allen, and Molly Ringwald—Godard produces something much more interesting: one of the most radical literary adaptations of all time, and one of the most underrated films of an unpredictable career.
To return to Astruc, tonight's film Sans Soleil is an example of "La Camera-Stylo" par excellence. An entire book could be dedicated to Marker's editing in the film, so I will not focus on it in particular at the moment; suffice to say the montage would not have been as effective if the footage itself was not shot with such patient and active framing and movement, by a true camera-writer. I am also choosing not to mention the text, which is of course essential to the film – my focus is solely on the creative independence offered by the small camera, which Astruc so presciently predicted.
The majority of the footage was shot by Marker himself, using a silent 16mm Beaulieu film camera to capture his own compendium of "things that quicken the heart." Although notes on the production are scare if existent at all due to Marker's public reclusiveness, we can assume a number of basic qualities that tie back to Astruc's ideas. Marker's footage seems to have been shot as the events and subjects were discovered and unfolding, and the lightweight Beaulieu provided the discreet ability to write with motion anywhere at any time during Marker's travels. Here we can note the uncanny clarity and purpose with which Marker investigates and focuses on his subjects. Early in the film at the cat cemetery in Tokyo, we have reason to suspect the man behind the camera is not an amateur but truly an auteur cameraman, as Marker moves to reframe the woman praying to the cat shrine.
Some of my other favorite stills from the film – needless to say a pretty difficult task to choose. Note the care in framing and composition:
Serving as the film's editor as well as the fictional narrator and fictional cameraman Sandor Krashna (Krashna's friend Hayao Yamaneko is also Marker, the name translating to "Mountain Cat" or "Wild Cat," cats being of course a favorite animal [of the filmmaker]) Marker creates a work that the term "essay film" only begins to describe. Indeed, this type of filmmaking seems a direct extension of Astruc's idea of the roles of screenwriter and director losing their distinction as new technology permits the evasion of the industrial mode of filmmaking that had so far codified into the classical Hollywood system and its worldwide exponents.
Marker's process is not unlike writing a novel or essay, wherein the author is alone with his stylus, writing an excess of ideas and musings which will ultimately be edited into its final form. Except with Marker, the writer is out engaging with the events of the world. Watching the film I feel as I am discovering cinema's potential for the first time – Sans Soleil gives lie to the notion that a fledgling filmmaker must be follow some arbitrary industrial production procedure in order to produce a work that is personal, affective, complex and sincere. As Abbas Kiarostami notes on his masterclass 10 on Ten, in regards to the small DV camera he used on Ten, small cameras "allow the artist to work alone again." Here the distinction between documentary and fiction loses its relevance in the same way it did for Godard in 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her. As Sam mentioned following the screening, it's simply because Marker and Godard choose to simply make a film and do not worry about the categories and genres which are ascribed after the fact.
Below is an excerpt from Marker's text I transcribed from the Criterion box set for Sans Soleil/La Jetee. I cannot help but take Marker's point that technology today could allow for anyone to create something extremely personal and exploratory, free from the restraints of capital. Although his reference to Vertov is certainly appropriate, Astruc could have been evoked just as easily. The real question is: with the advent of incredibly cheap HD video cameras (this generation's Beaulieu), why aren't there more films produced in kindred spirit with Sans Soleil? Why are there virtually no other camera-writers and most importantly:
Working on a shoestring, which in my case is more often a matter of circumstance than of choice, never appeared to me as a cornerstone for aesthetics, and Dogme-type stuff just bores me. So it's rather in order to bring some comfort to young filmmakers in need that I mention these few technical details: The material for La Jetee was created with a Pentax 24x36, and the only "cinema" part (the blinking of the eyes) with an Arriflex 35mm film camera, borrowed for one hour. Sans Soleil was entirely shot with a 16mm Beaulieu silent film camera (not one sync take within the whole film), with 100-foot reels – 2'44" autonomy! –and a small cassette recorder (not even a Walkman; they didn't exist yet). The only "sophisticated" device – given the time – was the spectre image synthesizer, also borrowed for a few days. This is to say that the basic tools for these two films were literally available to anyone. No silly boasting here, just the conviction that today, with the advent of computer and small DV cameras (unintentional homage to Dziga Vertov), would-be directors need no longer submit their fate to the unpredictability of producers or the arthritis of televisions, and that by following their whims or passions, they perhaps see on day their tinkering elevated to DVD status by honorable men.
This past Friday, I went to Anthology Film Archives to view Portuguese Filmmaker Pedro Costa speak about his new project Ne Change Rien. In addition to the premiere, Costa has assembled a program of selects that will play throughout the next two weeks. Within the program, the film Soigne Ta Droite (Keep Your Right Up), a mid-eighties film by Jean-Luc Godard, caught my attention. The film, complete with a Godard as Godard appearance – including a Chaplinesque leap into a Ferrari, expands the filmmaker’s layering of sounds, images and narration. Although profound, for the purposes of this entry, I would like to concentrate on the accompanying short film, Puissance de la Parole.
As if the free speaking engagement and film selects were not sufficient, Costa is also inserting a number of surprise screenings within the series. Anthology has billed these proverbial easter eggs as “a selection of miscellaneous music-related clips, videos, and other surprises throughout the programs, demonstrating his genius as filmmaker, curator, and YouTube-deejay!” Included within the Keep Your Right Up program is the short Puissance de la Parole.
Puuissance de la Parole is an unreleased video commercial prepared for France Telecom. Two main themes are reinforced via the film. First, the film highlights Godard’s ability to remain outside of the mainstream, even when funded by a corporate entity. Much like France / Tour / Detour / Deux / Enfants, the originality of the work is underexposed due to its obscurity. Nonetheless, Godard does not change his style to appease commercial entities. In fact, seemingly, his interaction with the commercial world makes his approach even more stringent. Second, the film suggests an expansion of the aesthetic qualities of Godard’s work. Puissance de la Parole, translated as the Power of the Word, is one of Godard’s first films created on video. As Godard warms up to this new technology, it seems obvious that the medium will serve as an enhancement, rather than a detriment, to his visual style.
In the clip provided, observe the intercutting between water, sun, clouds, film and satellite images. The scene could be interpreted on many levels. Ironically, as technological determinism, the video suggests a collision between images from natural and modern societies. In addition, the quick intercutting stresses the tension that has developed between both areas. Even more delightful, the combination of images creates a new visual aesthetic in Godard’s work. Although this is not the first time that he has used fast-motion cutting, the rhythm of the cut has accelerated and extended. Whereas previous films would include short sequences of quick cutting, Puissance de Parole makes use of lengthy sequences of crosscutting. I’ve always felt that the work of Godard has lacked the aesthetic precision of filmmakers like Marker, Antonioni or Ozu. With Puissance de la Parole, there is hope that Godard’s video oeuvre will begin to develop a sense of visual pleasure and move beyond a textual/narration emphasis. As suggested by Godard himself, for brief moments in Puissance de la Parole, he may be a cinematic Picasso, presenting work of a confounding and abnormal visual aesthetic, yet, at the same time, re-defining the parameters of image perception and sight.
Having only seen two late era Godard films, I am eager to view work from the post La Chinoise period. As Sam mentioned in class, Film Forum will also be showing Every Man For Himself from November 12-25. These films, along with our in-class screenings, will provide context for an era that is extremely rare: Godard’s work of the last 40 years.
I found this on UBU after trying to find "France Tour/Detour Deux Enfants" series Pedro mentioned was on here. Does Pedro or anyone else have the link? I was transfixed by the three clips we watched in class..
Spring 1970: Godard and Gorin, on the road, visiting colleges, speaking with Andrew Sarris, and explaining, through illustrated notebooks, their newest Dziga Vertov Group project, a film on Palestine.
After Godard had finished several films with the Dziga Vertov Group, he and Jean-Pierre Gorin traveled to the US to raise funds for their next project, Till Victory (1970), a film on the Palestinian struggle that was never finished. Godard in America captures Godard and Gorin argueing the finer points of revolutionary struggle as they visit several American universities. Scenes of Godard describing the Palestinian project to students while he rapidly flips through a storyboard filled with his characteristic drawings, capture the American university in the throes of its first love affair with radical Marxism. During a lighter moment, Jean-Luc states that he escaped his bourgeoise family background by going into the movie business only to discover that the movie business is the biggest bourgeoise family in the world. Featuring Andrew Sarris, Molly Haskell and others.
In Godard’s films we see the role of a participating capitalist consumer from gaze to touch to taste. With mouths so occupied in their delivery of lines and musings, it’s surprising that they even have time to ingest anything at all. And the cigarettes, yes, these are another ingestion completely- a distraction, a poetic abstraction of a species domesticated on terra Americana and repackaged abroad. Something so French, so intellectual, so useful at the cafes…like coffee (the galactic microcosm in Deux ou trioschoses que je sais d’elle [1966]), like sugary desserts and chocolate; like pommes frites…it does often percolate back to the American capitalist-dream-landscape, yes? So the smoking, it’s an intentional, capitalist mannerism as well as an imbedded, addictive after-thought most accused in Deux ou trioschoses que je sais d’elle and always present in Godard’s other films (having not seen all of his films “always” is a definite but no less firm assumption).
So the food: in Week-end (1967) there is the bread, or rather sandwich scene of the garbage workers. However, the image of the sandwich itself escapes me and is overshadowed by the hefty loaves of bread and their ensuing mess of crumbles and the full-mouths of the worker’s monologues. Monologues thus colonized and glutenized by this ensuing signifier of French sustenance and therefore existence; monologues hurriedly eaten through (however lengthy) and chomped-down lest they run out of time to nourish themselves (like the workers in Tout va bien [1972] who run out of time to urinate, etc. in their five minute breaks). Do I remember much of what these garbage (one Arab, one African) men said? No, I mostly remember that very French bread; those very full mouths.
Later in Week-end there is the cannibalistic scene that ends the film with Corinne consuming her husband’s ribs. Cannibalism aside, I don’t think of ribs as a French dish but rather as an American gustatory trope (at present); or a camping food (Hollywood westerns?); or as a dish habitually derived du porc- one of the two animals sacrificed in tribal scene. The pig: a devoted consumer full of an expansive desire and willingness to engorge itself- even in its/our own waste- for pure pleasure. The rib: as in Adam? Thus, is Corinne participating in a metaphorical self-consumption as well? Is she a consumer so obsessed with pigging out that it leads her to the ultimate degradation[1] of the self? Is the/her return to zer0 only possible through ingesting one/herself? But can a zer0 exist in the archeological traipsing-about of all that shit and in all those remains?
Next. In Tout va bien (1972), co-directed with Jean-Pierre Gorin, the majority of the mise-en-scène occurs within the Salumi sausage factory. A space that is “anti-realistic” and “a metaphorical representation of the state of the political struggle in France in 1972” (Morrey, 99). It could come as no surprise then that the state is represented through the production of a meaty phallus. (Or could it? This shows a marked difference from his earlier work when the capitalist hegemony was represented through variations of “literal” prostitution: Vivre sa vie [1962], Alphaville [1965], Deux ou Troisque je said d’elle [1966]). In Tout va bien, Godard and Gorin present the analogy of the dominant phallus not only as a factory product but as a producer of oppressed rights within the factory (even at a most basic, physical level as in the aforementioned urination scene where we witness male workers address the complications of the simple act of peeing) and within the society as a whole. Towards the end of the film, this image of oppression is further propagated with the black and white photograph of an erect pecker exhibited by Jane Fonda’s character, Susan[2]. As the scene with the CGT representative initiates (“flanked by two goons” [Morrey, 100] and placed in front of a meaty poster), the hegemony of the “giant” food producers encompasses more than the production of food, but system of trade as well (from salumi to other industrialized products [coffee, cigarettes, sugar, oranges...]).
To conclude: the supermarket and the oranges. There is a scene in the factory in which Susan and her husband Jacques (Yves Montaud) sit with some of the workers to talk. They have a spread of food before them consisting of bread, sausages and meats and some fruit I think, however, the only fruit I remember is the segment of orange, peel intact, that Susan sucks and nibbles on. Later in the (awesome) tracking shot within the supermarket, large bags of produce are repeatedly piled onto the automated conveyor belts ready to be tallied by the checkout workers. Bags of firm oranges repeatedly appear. (Where were those ripe oranges grown)? So here we are, ending this film that began within an “anti-realistic” factory within the hyperreal invention of the system of trade that is the supermarket. We track back and forth on the 0°/180° degree line[3] and each time the same consumers unload their baskets (sometimes they even unload the same item as revealed right before [!]). We see this ingestive behavior factorized in the body- these consumers without dialogue repeat their dance with their products accompanied by the mechanical rhythm of the registers, meanwhile activists or “agitators” (Morrey, 104) behind them give voice to an uprising and everything is free…. Well anyway, these ripe oranges, plump potatoes, French baguettes etc. are a different genre of waste than Silverman addresses. These are necessary wastes unlike a new Hermès bag or an Alfa Romeo, however they are nonetheless illusory in their mechanically perfected natures. They are a means to sustenance and then, ultimately evacuation: the coffee, the bread, the ribs, the salumi and the oranges are all assimilable modes of absorption within this marketed slurry of production and sabouche gustative.
clip (in Spanish) of tracking sequence in Tout va bien:
[1] Morrey writes of Silverman’s commentary on the “serial degradation” in that “each new product implies the degradation of the previous one into so much waste and, as the time allotted for the enjoyment of each new commodity becomes briefer and briefer, the entire system of value on which consumerism rests is revealed as so much shit” (78).
[2] Granted, this is an image relating to communicative duress of their marriage, but it is also representative of the total imagery of Tout va bien as well.
