Jean-Luc Godard

Born in 1930, Jean-Luc Godard became acquainted, while at university, with Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, forming part of a group of passionate young film critics writing in Cahiers du Cinéma, and filmmakers devoted to exploring new possibilities in cinema. Breathless (1960) was his first feature. Made on a shoe-string budget, it was spontaneous, vibrant and ground breakingly original. From then until 1967/8 was loosely his first period when he made an astonishing number of films, sometimes 3 a year. From 1968, Godard was very involved in political filmmaking, and then made a series of programmes for French TV in the mid and late 70s. With Sauve qui peut (la vie), Godard could be said to start a 3rd period through the 80s. In the 90s he started more formal experimentation, specifically with his long series Histoire(s) du Cinéma. His films have influenced filmmakers as diverse as Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Jim Jarmusch, Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino and Wong Kar-Wai. Godard’s intellectual and philosophical explorations of aesthetics and culture continued in relative seclusion in the later decades of his life, rewarding devotees with uncompromising, richly rewarding works including Film Socialisme (2010), Goodbye to Language (2014) in 3D and The Image Book (2018) in the second decade of the 21st Century alone. Jean-Luc Godard passed away in 2022 leaving a legacy as one of the great disruptors of cinema and one of its true trailblazers.

Source: IMDB, September 2022