Jean-Luc Godard is undeniably the filmmaker whose thought and film work were the most influential (and aroused/excited the most theoretical and critical analysis, with an incalculable, still lasting effect) on modern cinema and other artistic domains.
With a path composed of several movements - from the principles defended during his times as critic for Cahiers du Cinéma, put into action in the New Wave aesthetics, of which he was a leading figure (with his seminal Breathless opening a series of equally remarkable titles such as My Life to Live, Contempt, Pierrot le Fou, Made in U.S.A. or the caustic Week End, where the end of cinema itself is declared), to the more recent, experimental film-essays (Film Socialisme and Goodbye to Language), not to mention his most radical period (of the Dziga Vertov Group), both aesthetically and politically – Godard erected an immense and challenging body of work.
His work, profoundly reflexive, full of citations, references or allusions of several origins (cinematographic, literary. musical, philosophical, scientific, political theory), capable of merging “high” and “low” culture, working in an innovative way with archive footage, video (all of the SonImage production, the company that he established with Anne-Marie Miéville in 1972, is a small world to be discovered) and 3D, challenges History (and the history of cinema, with a small climax in the monumental Histoire(s) du Cinéma), the traumas of our time and the language (and its limits) with which we (don’t) communicate, always with an absolutely unmistakable signature.
It is to this indispensable author that Lisbon & Estoril Film Festival pays hommage in its 10th edition, presenting a complete retrospective of his films and an International Symposium, Godard vu par....