Jean-Luc Godard
Histoire(s) du cinéma - Moments choisis

Montréal, September 13, 2005. The fall season at the Musée d’art contemporain gets off to a cinematic start with the screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s masterly Histoire(s) du cinéma – Moments choisis from September 14 to October 2, 2005, featured as part of the Projections series.

Histoire(s) du cinéma – Moments choisis is a self-contained, 80-minute film made in 2000. It presents a new cut of Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma, produced between 1987 and 1998. In what is virtually a summation of his filmmaking principles, the director offers a history of cinema drawn from numerous film clips superimposed on historical sequences from the 20th century. Louise Ismert, coordinator of the Projections series at the museum, notes that, for Godard, “(hi)story emerges with the connecting of two images, it materializes during editing.” Godard has also written that “if directing is a gaze, editing is a heartbeat.” An edit made up of all previous edits, Moments choisis is the ultimate heartbeat of one of the greatest practitioners of the cinematic art.

Jean-Luc Godard was born in Paris in 1930 and has lived in Switzerland since the 1970s. After starting out as a film critic, he directed his first short film Opération Béton in 1954. He made his name, however, with his first feature film À bout de souffle (Breathless) (1960) starring Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo and became, along with Truffaut, one of the leading figures of the New Wave. His movie credits include more than 80 titles, most of which have become cult films. Every movie buff has a list of personal favourites. Especially noteworthy are Prénom Carmen (1982), winner of the Golden Lion at the 1983 Venice Film Festival, and Je vous salue Marie (1983), which caused a scandal at the time.

Histoire(s) du cinéma – Moments choisis
Schedule

Tuesday to Sunday at 12:30, 2 and 3:30 p.m.
Wednesday evenings at 6:30 and 8 p.m.

BWR Hall

Projections is the title of the museum’s film and video program. Recent film and video output is rich and diverse. Many artists from a wide variety of backgrounds—video makers, visual artists, composers—are drawn to the poetic power of the image projected on the big screen. Projections also refers to the energy of a thrust forward, toward the future of the moving image.

The Musée d'art contemporain is a provincially owned corporation funded by the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec. It receives additional funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Canada Council for the Arts.

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Source: Danielle Legentil
Media Relations Officer
Tel.:  (514) 847-6232
E-mail:  danielle.legentil@macm.org