Scénarios + Presentation of the Trailer of a Film "Scénario"
We are welcoming Fabrice Aragno, a filmmaker and Jean-Luc Godard's principal collaborator over the past twenty years. This event offers a unique opportunity, not only to engage with Aragno, but also to discover the French New Wave pioneer’s final, yet unreleased films in Montreal.
Presented by Fabrice Aragno, Jean-Luc Godard's collaborator
In French, ‘‘scénario’’ is cinema’s name for how it tells stories. This is the title Jean-Luc Godard chose for his final film, which was literally completed the day before his self-death. This did not mean that it would remain unfinished, but that its very unfinishedness would make it complete. Yet Scénario, which then became Scénarios is twofold: DNA, fundamental elements, and MRI, Odyssey. DNA is a biological signature, which gives a human subject its uniqueness; MRI evokes medical imagery and the distress felt by a weakened body, and suggests the subject being dissolved at the whim of magnetic resonance. Between these two polarities, which evoke genesis and decline in a strictly materialistic way, a person’s story unfolds, one made up of a jumble of notes and images, condensed into 18’. It is a singular yet shared narrative of a life haunted by death, as this film is also a farewell, the lamentation of a funeral. The two segments of this film open with a series of identical sequences. The second segment then diverges and ends on a self-portrait of JLG – his last images – sitting on his bed, bare-chested, he hides none of the wear on his body in the manner of Pigalle’s sculpted portrait of Voltaire. He’s filming himself transcribing Jean-Paul Sartre’s double logical and witty apologue on non-fingers: thus ends Scénarios, as it began, with a repetition, the figure of eternal return, the moment where time, which has been the great – if not unique – question of cinema, will have ceased to flow. (Écran noir productions)
In October 2021, Jean-Luc Godard presented his idea for Scénario, a 6 chapter feature film combining still and moving images, halfway between reading and seeing. (Écran noir productions)
Jean-Luc Godard
Born in Paris in 1930, Jean-Luc Godard grew up on the shores of Lake Geneva, initially developing a passion for painting. After the Second World War, which he spent in Switzerland, his family sent him to study in Paris, but Godard mainly attended film clubs and the Cinémathèque française. In the early 1950s, he became involved with the Ciné-club du Quartier Latin where he met Maurice Schérer (soon to be Éric Rohmer), François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and Jacques Rivette, among others, with whom he took his first steps as a critic and embarked on the adventure of the Cahiers du cinéma. After directing a few short films, he moved on to feature films in the wake of François Truffaut by directing Beathless (À bout de souffle) in 1960, a film that helped launch the French New Wave. He will not stop shooting until the 2010s, creating an exploratory body of work that has always pushed the boundaries of cinema.
Photo: ©Bertrand Carrière | Collections de la Cinémathèque québécoise
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Se souvenir de Jean-Luc Godard
La veille de sa mort volontaire, Jean-Luc Godard a bouclé un court métrage inédit de 18 minutes que la Cinémathèque est heureuse de présenter en première québécoise. Intitulé Scénarios (2024), il sera suivi du moyen métrage Exposé du film annonce du film « Scénario » (2024), tourné en 2021, dans lequel Godard expose son projet. À cette occasion, nous recevrons Fabrice Aragno, collaborateur du cinéaste depuis Notre musique (2004), et présenterons en 3D Adieu au langage (2014), œuvre majeure de sa période expérimentale, ainsi que le court métrage Les trois désastres (2013).