“I’m always surprised to see what I do,” Jean-Luc Godard admits at the beginning of a talk delivered, nearly four decades ago, at Concordia University in Montreal. Could the single most influential filmmaker of his generation, who is still a provocateur at age 84, possibly be as baffled as we?
Surprised or not, Godard has never been unwilling to explain his ideas, which are, after all, the subject of his deeply idiosyncratic films. In April 1978, the filmmaker took a pedagogical turn, embarking on a series of screenings in which his own work would be projected in the context of various classic movies and historical events, such as the Algerian War or May ’68. These screenings were followed by improvised, at times wildly free-associational, talks with the audience that Godard…
