Histoire(s) du cinéma

(Jean-Luc Godard, France 1989–98, digital, 266 min., French w/subtitles)

Holocaust: Affect and Absence. Jean-Luc Godard transformed the face of cinema with his prolific, influential, and revolutionary body of work (Breathless, Weekend, and Contempt, to name just a few). But Histoire(s) du cinéma is probably the towering achievement of a singular creative career spanning sixty years. Made over a decade, Histoire(s) du cinéma is an extraordinary look at the medium through the eyes of this unique filmmaker. Hugely ambitious in scope, the series covers a wide range of topics from the birth of cinema to Hollywood to Italian neorealism and beyond. A dazzling montage of sight and sound, Histoire(s) du cinéma features a diverse array of film extracts, the voices of—among others—Juliette Binoche and Alfred Hitchcock, and an eclectic music soundtrack ranging from Beethoven to Leonard Cohen. It ultimately boils down to a bitter indictment of the medium that has, according to Godard, betrayed its historical promise because it failed to confront the horror of the Holocaust by recording its images.