The Cinematheque

“The Image Book could not be more of the moment … [It] is framed with an injunction to keep hope alive, a demand that comes as close to offering a definition of what great art does.”

Amy Taubin, Artforum

The Image Book
(Le livre d’image)
Switzerland/​France 2018
Jean-Luc Godard
84 min. DCP

Jean-Luc Godard’s final feature, awarded the first and so far only Special Palme d’Or at Cannes, befits its legacy as the auteur’s last testament to the art form he helped shape and evolve. A postscript of sorts to his magnum opus Histoire(s) du cinéma, sharing with it his distinctive, angular montage-essay form, The Image Book is a haunting treatise on the ontology of the moving image and its historical failure to assuage the evils of humankind. Across five chapters (“like the five fingers of a hand”), Godard employs a deluge of text, manipulated clips, and music citations—not to mention his own gravelly voice—to connect the grim dots between cinema’s averted gaze during the Holocaust, and the orientalism, if not erasure, of images of an Arab world beset by violence. A brilliant, densely packed work of film philosophy by the medium’s foremost thinker in, and cataloguer of, images.

In French, English, Arabic, and Italian with English subtitles

“A work of poetry … The act of watching The Image Book feels like a process of categorization, of putting words and images into cognitive compartments so that the sensual can translate into sense.” Blake Williams, Filmmaker Magazine

preceded by

Trailer of a Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars
(Film annonce du film qui n’existera jamais: « Drôles de guerres »)
France/​Switzerland 2023
Jean-Luc Godard
20 min. DCP

Before bidding adieu in September 2022, Godard completed this sophisticated thumbnail sketch, or ​“trailer,” for a doomed adaptation of Charles Plisnier’s 1937 novel Faux passeports. The handcrafted short, produced by fashion house Yves Saint Laurent, now stands as the director’s elusive last work—to be dissected, puzzled over, but above all, thankful for.

In French with English subtitles

“The trailer for Phony Wars not only stands in for the nonexistent film. It serves as a retroactive trailer for cinema itself, a real-time evolution of the medium … that heralds the medium to come.” Michael Sicinski, Cinema Scope

The January 12 screening will include ​“JLG Forever” opening remarks by Shaun Inouye, artistic director of The Cinematheque.