Following the completion of Le Livre d’image (The Image Book) in 2018, Jean-Luc Godard took on two substantial new commissions. As usual at this point in his career, he set about developing these through the artisanal production of image–text collages, which form part of the rich tradition of 'paper films' created on the page rather than in image and sound.

The first commission was from the fashion house Saint Laurent. Godard proposed a six-part feature film to be titled Drôles de guerres (Phony Wars) inspired by Charles Plisnier’s 1937 collection of novellas devoted to political idealism and disillusionment, Faux Passeports (translated as Memoirs of a Secret Revolutionary), which he planned to shoot in a combination of video, black-and-white 35mm, and colour Super 8 and 16mm.

The second commission, Scénario (Script), was from the Opéra National de Paris. Godard initially envisaged this as having three distinct but interrelated sections, which would be 'brought together like images and sounds, or counterpoint and melody': an audiovisual script for a film; a six-part feature film to be shot backstage at the Opéra Bastille in Paris; and the writing by him of a libretto.

Godard’s progress on these projects was significantly disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, intense heatwaves in 2021 and 2022, and his deteriorating health. Abandoning the idea of completing Drôles de guerres, he made instead Film annonce du film ‘Drôles de guerres’ (1er tournage) (Trailer for the Film ‘Phony Wars’ [1st Shoot]), an image–sound poem that rejects conventional boundaries between page and screen, paper and audiovisual film, working document and finished artwork, and script–trailer for a film and the imaginary film it announces and contains.

As for Scénario, Godard’s filmed 2021 presentation of the final collage script for this project was released posthumously under the title Exposé du film annonce du film ‘Scénario’ (Presentation of the Trailer for the Film ‘Scénario’) alongside a further two-part film he had mapped out on paper in the days immediately preceding his assisted suicide in September 2022, Film annonce du film ‘Scénarios’: 1 – éléments fondateurs, 2 – IRM odysée (Trailer for the Film ‘Scénarios’: 1 – Foundational Elements, 2 – MRI Odyssey).

These three final works all occupy a fertile, unstable intermediate space between completion and incompletion. On the one hand, they are fully finished artworks; on the other, they carry within them, in a perpetual state of promise, possibility and becoming, the architecture and ingredients of the virtual films they announce: Drôles de guerres, Scénario and Scénarios, respectively.

We are delighted to welcome Mitra Farahani, who produced two of the films, to the ICA for this screening. The screening will be followed by a conversation between Mitra Farahani, Daniel Turner and Michael Witt.

Programme

Film annonce du film ‘Drôles de guerres’ (1er tournage) (Trailer for the Film ‘Phony Wars’ [1st Shoot]), dir. Jean-Luc Godard, France/Switzerland 2023, 20 min.

Exposé du film annonce du film ‘Scénario’ (Presentation of the Trailer for the Film ‘Scénario’), dir. Jean-Luc Godard, France/Switzerland 2024, 36 min.

Film annonce du film ‘Scénarios’: 1 – éléments fondateurs, 2 – IRM odysée (Trailer for the Film ‘Scénarios’: 1 – Foundational Elements, 2 – MRI Odyssey’), dir. Jean-Luc Godard, France/Switzerland 2024, 18 min.