Underplayed Gems

Histoire(s) du cinéma (1989)

Histoire(s) du cinéma poster
Directed by
Jean-Luc Godard
Genre
documentary film, documentary television program
Country
France, Switzerland
Length
1 season, 8 episodes
Rating
4.9 of 10 from 7 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this series is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

Jean-Luc Godard looks at the history of film and how it connects to the 20th century. This eight part video essay shifts freely between images, sounds, and ideas from movies and history. It questions how cinema tells stories and records the past.

thoughtfulfragmentedreflectivedenseexperimentalpoeticunhurriedallusiveintellectual

What happens

Histoire(s) du cinéma (French: [istwaʁ dy sinema]) is an eight-part video project begun by Jean-Luc Godard in the late 1980s and completed in 1998. At a total of 266 minutes, it is the longest and one of the most complex of Godard's projects. Histoire(s) du cinéma is an examination of the history of the concept of cinema and how it relates to the 20th century; in this sense, it can also be considered a critique of the 20th century and how it perceives itself. The project is widely considered Godard's magnum opus. Histoire(s) du cinéma is always referred to in English by its French title, because of the untranslatable word play it implies: histoire means both "history" and "story," and the s in parentheses gives the possibility of a plural. Therefore, the phrase Histoire(s) du cinéma simultaneously means The History of Cinema, Histories of Cinema, The Story of Cinema and Stories of Cinema. Similar double or triple meanings, as well as puns, are a recurring motif throughout Histoire(s) and much of Godard's work. The film was screened out of competition at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival. Nine years later, it was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1997 Festival. The soundtrack was released as a 5-CD boxed set on the ECM record label. In 2012, it was voted the 48th greatest film of all time in a poll of film directors by Sight & Sound. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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