THE 5 BEST QUOTES FROM THE RARE NEW JEAN-LUC GODARD INTERVIEW
so everyone’s favorite crotchety auteur / eternal rapscallion / visual socialist isn’t too much for interviews, but he recently granted a rare one to German website Zeit Online in order to hype his most recent feature, Film Socialisme. or maybe he was just using Film Socialisme as an excuse to preach via outlets like Zeit Online… whatever.
anyway, the interview is every bit as provocative as you would expect, every bit as kooky as you would hope. it was exclusively published in German and so what you see below passages translated to the best of my ability, just a few of my favorite excerpts from a conversation that goes all over the place (including a critical but quickly dismissed KUNG-FU PANDA reference).
“If you’re really looking for it, then you can find something on the net… in FILM SOCIALISME there is a recording that I copied from the Internet: two cats purring, creating a dialogue. The people who filmed this is achieved a pretty picture. But they go no further. There are too many shots on the net, and maybe three of 100,000 make something mildly interesting…
… I have no Internet connection. But if someone says something is on there, then I’m going to have a friend help me to look at it… The network remains a democracy with much information but without much sense. It is dominated by high priests, called servers, which are themselves controlled by corporations.”
“We are very dominated by what one might call simply ‘the technology.’ I have no mobile phone. People think the buttons or the display of their phone are there to control. But they are the buttons that control us. (Godard types on his old phone) when I select a number on this old machine, I do not feel that he knows me. Maybe a little. But I do not feel forced, it entlangzustreichen (“sweeps?”) on the thing. This is the same relationship as between a dog and his owner, which have a line between them. In this respect there are two masters or two slaves. In any case, the dog just like his master ruled that it reversed. This also applies to airplanes, cars, everything. Sometimes the technique seems obscene.”
on the capitalization of cinema:
“Well, there are great exhibitions of famous painters, attended en masse. One would think that people no longer go there because they satisfy the pictures of the ZDF, one of TV or CNN. But they have the desire to see something that does not speak in connection with language. They want to see pictures. But it shows them in buildings that look like mausoleums or churches that they attended in procession, as if walking into a temple. In the temple of profit. In this regard, I have a socialist approach to the art.”
TIME: The cinema has its temples.
“The multiplexes. Yes, the popcorn are temples where the cinema is only an accessory. I wonder how there can be a cultural critique of capitalism, when the culture itself has long been capitalized.”
on progress and the diversification of objects:
“I’m not against democracy or progress. I criticize only way we deal with it. I buy my cameras in ordinary photo discounters. But man has invented so many things that he cannot control it. You know so much more about the technology, but think so much less. And this concerns not only the technology. Look at this ashtray, he still looks all right. Why do we need thousands of additional models? Earlier saw the car from different brands, today they are all equal. A single company would do. Everyone wants to invent a little, everyone wants to create. So you have thousands created to satisfy the desire for creation.”
on contemporary filmmakers (both amateur and professional) fundamentally misusing the camera:
“Three quarters of the people who make movies today need no camera to see something… The people ultimately do not shoot, they write. And then copy to the camera what they have written. You [should use the camera to see something that would remain invisible without a camera. Something that needs a camera to exist at all.”
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