Few filmmakers have left behind such a groundbreaking, influential and radical oeuvre as Jean-Luc Godard, who passed away in September. From his first to his last film, he remained an indefatigable explorer of the possibilities and limits of the art of film. ‘Every film has a beginning, middle and end, but not necessarily in that order’, said the French-Swiss master filmmaker – and not without reason. If there was anybody who turned film and narrative conventions upside down and inside out, it was Godard. But whether his fiendish tricks were playful or irritating, profound, pretentious, unbearable, delightful or beautiful, Godard was never concerned with purely teasing his viewers. He wanted to give them a totally new experience of film and reality.

In this lecture film journalist and Godard enthusiast Kevin Toma takes you on a surprising journey through Godard’s wilful, fascinating work. Rather than a summary of Godard’s biography, you can expect a bird’s-eye view of a number of brilliant scenes and images, from the jump cuts from À bout de souffle (1960) to the surrealist traffic jam from Week-end (1967), and from the slow-motion beauty of Sauve qui peut (1980) to the brain-teasing 3D experiments from Adieu au language (2014). And what is the most beautiful scene of all that Godard shot with his muse Anna Karina? Each in their own way, the clips let you see (and hear and feel) the breadth of Godard’s genius and show why we can refer to cinema before Godard, and cinema after him.

After the lecture, at 21:00, Lumière shows Godard’s film A BOUT DE SOUFFLE.

In cooperation with Lumiere Cinema.