David Sterritt

Jean-Luc Godard: Interviews David Sterritt

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Publisher Marketing: "I am trying to change the world, " film-maker Jean-Luc Godard told critic Gene Youngblood some thirty years ago. He has pursued his revolution in works ranging from the explosive Breathless to the eloquent Contempt to the controversial Hail Mary and the postmodern Histoire(s) du cinema, shaking up conventional formulas with boldly innovative approaches to every aspect of cinema and video - including film criticism via provocative essays in Cahiers du Cinema and interviews dating to the early years of his career. This book presents a varied selection of his conversations with critics, scholars, and journalists, spanning the 1960s to the 1990s and illuminating key facets of his life work and ideas. Publisher Marketing: Some thirty years ago filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard told critic Gene Youngblood, I am trying to change the world. He has pursued his revolution in works ranging from the explosive "Breathless" to the eloquent "Contempt" to the controversial "Hail Mary" and the postmodern "Histoire(s) du cinema," shaking up conventional formulas with boldly innovative ap-proaches to every aspect of cinema and video-including film criticism via provocative essays in "Cahiers du Cinema" and interviews dating to the early years of his career. This book presents a varied selection of his conversations with critics, scholars, and journalists, spanning the 1960s to the 1990s and illuminating key facets of his life, work, and ideas. Topics include the seductiveness of cinema (Films are the only things by which to look inside of people, and that's why people are so fond of movies and why they'll never die); film as a blend of truth and beauty (I mix images and sounds like a scientist, I hope. The mystery of the scientific is the same as the mystery of the artist. So is the misery); and the personal realities of aging (Maybe it's that when you get old, in one way you feel younger and younger but still being old-young oldness, if I may say so, which is very. . .comforting). As challenging and evocative as they are quirky and unpredictable, these interviews cast light on Godard's lifelong position as a proudly unclassifiable thinker who feels, as he said in 1980, that a language is obviously made to cross borders. I'm someone whose real country is language, and whose territory is movies. David Sterritt is an associate professor of film at Long Island University and film critic of "The Christian Science Monitor."

Contributor Bio:  Sterritt, David David Sterritt, associate professor of film at Long Island University, is the film critic for the "Christian Science Monitor," He is also on the film studies faculty at Columbia University and served for several years on the New York Film Festival selection committee. He is the author of "The Films of Alfred Hitchcock," and his collected film criticism is housed by invitation in the Harvard Film Archive at Harvard University. Contributor Bio:  Godard, Jean-Luc Jean-Luc Godard, one of the founding fathers of the French New Wave, has been an influential force in film since his first feature-length film, "A Bout de Souffle ("Breathless). Today, his influence extends across such key contemporary film-makers as Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Jim Jarmusch, Wim Wenders, Steven Soderbergh and Quentin Tarantino. Youssef Ishaghpour is Professor at University Rene Descartes, Paris V. His writings on cinema, painting, philosophy and literature have been widely translated.