Jean-Luc Godard
France | 1982 | 10 min
Language : French
1981 : to mark the coming to power of a left-wing government, French television commissioned Godard to make a film on the subject of change. This film needs to be seen as part of a long series of cinematographic essays “on and under communication”, in which Godard explores the cinema/video/television relationship (Le gai savoir, Six fois deux, France/tour/détour/deux enfants, etc.). Like Lettre à Freddy Buache, Changer d’image is born of the impossibility of fulfilling his commission. Because the place where change occurs is not the image itself, but in our relationship with it. “Changing image” means first changing the relationship between fiction and documentary, television and cinema, executioner and victim… Which is what Godard demonstrates, alone, facing up to the blank screen: the television sponsor being defined as a “collaborator” and the filmmaker as “occupied territory”, it remains to be proven: Godard, in double image, half naked and tied to a chair, allows himself to be slapped and tortured… Hysteria, sweet madness of the Resistance.
Laurent Roth
Translation BMP Translations
