Here and Elsewhere (1975)

Original title

Ici et Ailleurs

Directed by

Jean-Pierre Gorin, Anne-Marie Miéville, Jean-Luc Godard

Genre

documentary film

Country

France

Runtime

52 min

Rating

6.7 of 10 from 30 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This film looks at footage of Palestinian fighters that was made for an earlier project. The directors examine how the original footage was used and how the images change meaning. It also shows a French family watching TV at home and contrasts their lives with what is happening elsewhere in the world.

politicalcriticalanalyticalreflectivedidacticfragmentedmeditativeunsettling

What happens

Here and Elsewhere (French: Ici et Ailleurs) is a 1976 documentary film by Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville. It is a film essay, narrated by Godard and Miéville, which began as a film entitled Jusqu'à la victoire (Until Victory), undertaken by the Dziga Vertov Group, the partnership of Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin who together made a number of political films between 1968 and 1972. Here and Elsewhere incorporates footage of Palestinian fedayeen in Jordan, Lebanon, and the West Bank taken for Jusqu'à la victoire, which had been commissioned by the Arab League. The footage had been shelved in 1970 after many of the subjects were killed in the events of Black September. In Here and Elsewhere, Godard and Miéville analyze and critique this footage, including their attempt to use Palestinians as stand-ins for Godard and Gorin's own views. The film also features footage of a French family watching television (here) in juxtaposition to the footage from the Middle East (elsewhere). This footage was shot in 1974 in Grenoble where Godard and Miéville had recently moved. Primarily the film is a criticism of how capitalism's use of media distorts the aims of liberative and revolutionary causes, among other aspects of economic and social disparities. This critique is applied to the filmmakers themselves, the Palestinian fighters, and the European Left more broadly. Ici et Ailleurs marks the beginning of Godard's transitional period, which found him experimenting in very original ways with video, and political and representational polemics; 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 remained the major collaborator in his life and work since that period. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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