Godard Exhibition in Paris

Look at Godard there. That was taken at Cannes in May. Not too bad for a 75 year old, methinks.

Anyway, if anyone wants to take me to Paris sometime before August 14, I am up for it. The Georges Pompidou Center is hosting a retrospective of Godard put together by Godard for a few more weeks. The New York Times article on the exhibition makes it seem as irreverant as one could expect from Godard.

For instance, the title...

Travel(s) in Utopia, Jean-Luc Godard 1946-2006, In Search of a Lost Theorem

Here is a brief explanation....

One enters "Travel(s)" via a long rectangular gallery labeled "Yesterday," with "Before Yesterday" to the left and "Today" on the right.

"Today" is a riff on domestic interiors, a room about the stuff we keep in rooms. Propped on a bed in the position of someone reading a book, a flat-screen television loops a sequence from "Black Hawk Down." This is flanked by a shelf of disconnected audio and video components, a flowerless vase, an arrangement of fake plants and a photomontage of home furnishings cut from glossy magazines. Elsewhere a hard-core pornographic montage is installed beside an ersatz kitchen.

At the center of "Yesterday," the central gallery, a grouping of plants obscures two monitors, a homage, perhaps, to Nam June Paik's "TV Garden." Other monitors along the floor show excerpts of films by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, Nicholas Ray, Fritz Lang and others. The most striking element is a large electric train that passes through an aperture roughly cut in the wall, connecting "Yesterday" with "Before Yesterday."

And it's possible that the author of the article speaks in even greater hyperbole than myself...

"Travel(s)" may be the most demanding and audacious film of Mr. Godard's career, possibly the most hermetic and definitely the most chaotic. Like much of his late work, it can be read as an elegy for the history of cinema and the cinema of history. However it began, it ended as a characteristic act of opposition. At the very moment of his career embalment, Mr. Godard has let everyone know he's alive and kicking.

Good Lord. Do you think there is any chance of getting this to travel to the Children's Museum? The hardcore pornagraphy probably rules that out, unfortunately.

From what I can tell, This is the official english language website of the exhibit