User:Aitantv/Here and Elsewhere, Godard

Here and Elsewhere (1976) dir. Jean Luc Godard. Single channel film, stereo sound, 00:53:00 duration. Gaumont, France.

• "We should construct peace with the help of this gun"

+ documentary essay film focusing on the disparity between the consumption of images of war and the sites of warfare. A french family watches news reports of war and revolution (HERE) while footage of palestinian revolutionaries planning their revolt is gathered in the field (ELSEWHERE)

• "Death is represented by a flow of images and sounds that hide silence, a silence that becomes deadly"

+ the two narrators, perhaps the director (Jean Luc) and a more objective female voiceover (Anne-Marie Miéville), dissect the stream of images passing through the screen.

• "My daily image will be part of a vague and complicated system where the whole world eneters and leaves at each moment"

+ quotidian scenes of daily life in France are interrupted by everyday domestic scenes.

+ scenes are constantly commented on. why this directing choice? Why this woman to represent the Palestinian revolutionairies?

+ as a Jew it was a little difficult to see Golder Meyer compared to Hitler, with the use of the same sign language. But the film undisputably questioned the rhetoric around the holocaust and how that is often used by the Israeli state to jusify its violence.

• "Ici et Ailleurs marks the beginning of Godard's transitional period, which found him experimenting with video and moving from political polemics to an examination of the way people perceive themselves and others; as such, it shares many of the traits of both his radical-era films and the video-centered work that followed. It is also one of his first projects with Miéville, who has remained the major collaborator in his life and work since." (wikipedia entry)