John Menick Blog

The online film journal Rouge just published Michael Witt’s translation of Dominique Païni’s article describing the history of the aborted collaboration between Godard and the Pompidou. The translation includes a piece of information crucially missing from most American press articles: namely, how exactly it was all supposed to work:

Talks between Jean-Luc Godard and the Pompidou Centre began in 2003. The initial proposal was based on the screening of films over a fairly long period (nine months), drawing both on cinema history and contemporary production, and organised around a principle of monthly meetings. The rhythm envisaged at the outset was that of a week of ‘image gathering’, two weeks of editing, followed by projection of the resultant film at the Pompidou Centre in the fourth week. The plan was that this would lead to a sort of series in which each ‘episode’, when completed, would be enriched through its proximity to those that came before. The event therefore comprised nine monthly meetings to which visitors to the Centre were to be invited with a view to discovering a new opus each time.

Also in Rouge: Dziga Vertov storyboards, a Abbas Kiarostami and Víctor Erice exhibition, and more.