# 5. Jean-Luc Godard's *Histoire(s) du cinéma* or Cinema Surpasses Itself

*Céline Scemama*

**Abstract**

This text, which constitutes the introduction to Céline Scemama's book *Histoire(s) du cinéma de Jean-Luc Godard: La force faible d'un art*, is a double tribute: to Céline, who scrupulously deciphered the multiple artistic references contained in Godard's masterpiece and to JLG who, from the start of his oeuvre to *LIVRE D'IMAGES* (2018), sought in the obstinate invention of a post-cinema the very essence of this art. Halfway between Montaigne's essay and Rembrandt's self-portrait, *HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA* is also halfway between the origin of cinema and its destiny as post-art.

**Keywords:** History, cinema, self-portrait

The prejudice is dryly and violently expressed as follows: Godard is impossible to comprehend, he actually has nothing to say, it's all just blowing in the wind.

The public recognized and crowned Godard as king of the New Wave, but it was perhaps because his films still bore the traces and the visible cannons of the Old Wave. What is disturbing about his last work is the absence of stitching on the fabric and of main (filmic) threads.<fnref n="1" /> More and more words, more and more images. But also more and more mystery. By positioning himself on the fringe of all possible categories, Godard exposes himself to different kinds of criticism: he is a ghost speaking an unknown language, an impostor illuminated by his media aura, or a living legend that one hardly dares to contradict. Filmic experiments, self-portraits, film concepts ... Godard is accused of complicating his discourse. It is true that he himself

<footnote n="1">1 In the French source text: "fil(m) conducteur." *Editorial note*.</footnote>
gives his detractors a stick to hit him with: “Why make it simple when you
can make it complicated?,”<fnref n="2" /> he writes on the screen of HISTOIRE(s).

After the screening of a Godard film, it is difficult to make the connection
between the floods of images, sounds and words, or to link them to a possible
subject. Some viewers are afraid of misunderstanding, think they are not
up to the task and overestimate his reasoning, while others suspect him of
pretending to be a virtuoso thinker, while being no more than an empty
shell. That is why he is sometimes a cult object and sometimes demonized.
We tend to think that Godard should be taken seriously, or that he takes
himself seriously. The fact is, however, that we mistake the object: it is not
about the filmmaker and his sometimes dogmatic discourse on the world,
it is always and only about cinema. What Godard takes seriously is cinema
and more generally the question of image in a world where we learn to read
and write, but never to see.

The very title, HISTOIRE(S) DU CINÉMA<fnref n="3" /> with its plural “s” is already an
enigma and the subject of a misinterpretation. HISTOIRE(S) DU CINÉMA and
not “les Histoire(s) du cinéma:” the plural in the title is only visual. The title
suggests that the film is about cinema, and yet it is about all the (hi)stories:
it is not a history of cinema, but about the Histoire(s) or (hi)stories told by
cinema. The article in “du” (“of the”) makes the title even more equivocal:
our understanding is that the object of the film is to tell the story of cinema,
but cinema is firstly the subject. It is not Godard who tells us the history
of cinema because *the only storyteller is cinema*. And yet, the filmmaker is
omnipresent in his works, although he does not expose himself in his own
name: the filmmaker has been replaced by the cinema. From Descartes’s
“cogito ergo sum” to Godard’s “cogito ergo video,” the transformation is not
a rhetorical one: he actually thinks what he sees. In other words, he *thinks*,
i.e., he *sees*. Godard’s thoughts do not exist outside the images that meet
on the screen.

Before HISTOIRE(S) DU CINÉMA, Godard's films, however marginal, could
always be generically identified: for example, JLG/JLG, AUTOPORTRAIT DE
DÉCEMBRE / SELF-PORTRAIT IN DECEMBER (1994) or FOR EVER MOZART (1996)
could be called self-portraits or film experiments. Here, we are dealing
with something completely new: neither fiction nor documentary nor

<footnote n="2">² The quotation is from a cartoon, LES SHADOKS, which was popular in France in the late 1960s. It was the motto of a group of funny, plump and anthropomorphic birds, perched on very thin legs, who were nasty and stupid, and spent their time building complicated and useless machines. *Editorial note*.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³ *Translator's note:* in French, “histoire” means both story and history; the “s” in the plural “histoires” is silent. The closest equivalent to the original title was *Cinema (hi)story/ies*.</footnote>
experimental film. HISTOIRE(S) DU CINÉMA is not really linked to any place: neither film location nor screening space. HISTOIRE(S) DU CINÉMA does not fall into any category: it is a wandering work of art.

The author is usually behind the camera. Not here. Or not really. Almost all the images come from somewhere else. Except for a few quotations read by Alain Cuny, Sabine Azema, Julie Delpy or Juliette Binoche, the interview with Daney, and lastly, a few images of Godard himself.

With its chapters, film is similar to books, but it is not a book. Two book series complete the film: the *Livres blancs* (or *White books*) from Gallimard's White Collection and the *Livrets bleus* (or *Blue booklets*) which accompany the discs of the film's complete soundtrack.

Since Godard could not show everything, why this particular length? Why four hours and twenty-five minutes, and not one hour and thirty minutes or two hours, i.e., a more traditional format? The length of the film puts it in the category of monumental works.

This monument-work does not tell a story, it makes history. History is usually associated with a succession of dates. In HISTOIRE(S), however, periods of history have been dispersed, and the only dates between 1940 and 1944 that are actually mentioned, perpetually return in incantatory mode. Godard's view of the twentieth century is articulated and buttressed across these years. The repetition provides emphasis in the film by reminding, rejecting and commemorating at the same time. The repetition in the work obliges the analyst to return to certain figures, fragments of sentences, images and recurring sounds to grasp the convolutions of these (hi)stories unleashed by the jolts and spasms of a past which has been buried alive.

The fact that the film is a-chronological does not prevent it from finding an arrangement and from putting together its vision of history. Any chronological expectation is already a misunderstanding. The historian's work is no different from his formal research: the principles of dispersion and coming together are not distinct from his theses on history. These are the gestures by which Godard fashions a work: a work of history.

This unclassifiable work resists any convenient summary, any systematization in one overview. The dispersion assumed by the filmmaker's gesture must not be circumvented but, on the contrary, confronted. The mode of approximation, collision, counterpoint, friction, superimposition, intertwining and confusion begins with the genesis of the work, with its heterogeneous material awaiting questioning, i.e., to come together. What posture and what gaze should one adopt to look at an oeuvre for which our analytical tools are inadequate or insufficient, and how should we talk about it?
Music, photography, painting, engraving, sculpture, literature, archives, philosophy, poetry, discourses, history and ... cinema. Godard added an “s” to his HISTOIRE(S), but not to be trendy. With its scintillating array of references, the work sometimes seems to push the spectator toward some sort of concentrated, active and erudite attention. Even the most attentive viewers will quickly be knocked over by a mighty wind which unremittingly dislocates bits of history and culture in a kaleidoscope of permanent electro-shocks. We are tempted to try and organize this abundant and fragmented material and to draw immediate conclusions from it; similarly, we are tempted to channel this flow of incessant and apparently chaotic movements, these layers of overlapping sounds and words with their continuous interferences and flickering. The eye and ear can never rest on anything stable, everything is always immediately transformed, and within such a short period of time that it is often impossible to grasp the object of this transformation. If nothing can be done in a truly autonomous way: the text *on its own*, the images *on their own*, the soundtrack *on its own*, and if *only* the film can bring everything together, it finds no harmony, however: its order remains disorder and dissonance.

However, some images, some notes or some words do escape the flood of HISTOIRE(S) and are suspended for our attention for the duration of a mirage. But outside the deluge from which they were taken, they persist for a moment in a void and then vanish, evaporate and disappear. During the time it took them to disappear, countless ocular and auditory cataclysms occurred on-screen that we saw and heard, almost in spite of ourselves, but of which there are only traces left, like a persistence of vision. The flow of images, sounds, spoken words, written words and words read out, compels the most attentive of us to a form *of wandering attention* that accepts the dispersion as a form of contemplation. Paradoxically, Godard’s work imposes a violent contemplation in which all the elements of the composition explode and yet offer unity within the explosion. How can we let ourselves be carried away by a movement that is always contradictory, violent, pulling in all directions, in which, every second, new constellations appear and then disperse into a thousand shards that escape our senses, which have become impotent by the trial of such a dislocation? The moments of contemplation offered to us are no different from short circuits and shocks that never leave any respite. Most often, we do not even have time to discern what can be found in a single shot. One must accept to let the images escape at the same time they appear, like shooting stars.

Faced with this convulsive mechanism, we can stand at a distance for an overview punctuated by a detailed analysis of certain striking stylistic
figures or surprising proposals. This is a possibility, but the risk is remaining outside the work and deliberately missing what makes it a true work on history. The risk is in fact to separate what Godard takes care to combine: the work of the filmmaker/historian. On the contrary, we can insist on our analysis never distinguishing the work of the artist from that of the historian. This means never extracting words and sounds from the images. The position we have chosen as our own is one of analysis, with the vocation to respect things as they are exposed in various places without attempting to manipulate them: that is, without wanting them to say what we have more or less decided to hear before listening and looking with the special attention that the work requires. We leave it to the filmmaker/historian to manipulate the poetic matter, which is also his historical matter. As for us, we will make do with studying his theses on history, which, moreover, is no small challenge.

What does this mean in practice? It is not to comment on a passage in evocation mode from the outside, but to immerse oneself in the details of each crystallization of atoms, each constellation. It also means starting to disperse the objects around the screen, i.e., managing to spread the material of the work without decomposing it entirely. It is a very acrobatic posture, let's admit it, to prolong the dispersion of a work for that which one is studying. It is scarcely enough to decipher the infinite fabric of references that crosses the film. It is not our intention to produce thoughts on the HISTOIRE(S), but to try thinking along *with* it (them).

*Thinking* along with, first of all means knowing how to surrender to the flows of associations. But nothing is simple, because it also means knowing how to interrupt the flow through which the association acquires its beauty and all its scope. This becomes even more complicated because it is not so much a question of stopping the flow of associations by freezing the image but of suspending the very moment of the connection by means of which the “speech of sight” happens, i.e., the thought behind the film. “Baudelaire, describing a shock experience, talks about a ‘conscience-endowed kaleidoscope’” (Benjamin 2002, 361). To capture the moment when an idea occurs on the screen like a spark, we will not be able to avoid this shock experience.

Godard, on the other hand, questions the images. It is a matter of questioning *with him*, and not in his stead, the implication of this or that image on another image, the association with a particular instrument, a certain melody, sentence, word, or voice ... However, the details of each arrangement and their mode of appearance are not immediately clear to us; perhaps we are even troubled. A multitude of details appear and further deepen the abyss of interferences and correspondences deployed by the film, this “form
that thinks.” On the one hand, images and sounds must be allowed to flow without attempting to retain them. On the other hand, contrarily, there must be reconsiderations of the whole, of a specific chapter, a particular constellation, and especially of certain link shots.

Images reflect one another, fragment, mix, transform, repeat, collide, fuse, superimpose, duplicate, multiply into infinity like a thousand mirror fragments or a constellation of stars. These swirling images, words and sounds disintegrate or intertwine in a process that escapes a linear arrangement. The flashes that punctuate history sometimes form a constellation. It explodes in turn, disperses; then in another arrangement, elsewhere, it becomes something different. One must try to capture the movements, the to and fro, the shocks or the repetitions that run through the entire oeuvre. This phenomenon of fits and starts is conveyed to the image through flashes, superimpositions, iris effects, shutters, fade in-fade-outs, quick fades, repetitions ... where images, words and sounds meet. Those who want to see, that is to say to understand, will have to accept this torsion which consists in resisting the desire to put in order, to classify, to globalize. It is thus not a very comfortable position to have to focus one's attention to such an extent, only to lose immediately what enlightened us for the duration of the spark. Maybe it is because Godard's experience of loss is itself part of his vision of history.

All the elements that make up the HISTOIRE(s) are removed from their context; they have lost their place. All documents constitute the test of time. Godard composes a history film with what History is made of: inventions, words, wars, paintings, assassinations, births, films, poetry, novels, dictators, texts, engravings, monuments, speeches, betrayals, lies, machines, filmed, narrated, forgotten events ... "Things exist, why manipulate them," said Ros-sellini (1984, 54; qtd. in 3a, 25'28). Godard does not invent historical matter, but nevertheless everything is different, transformed, manipulated: "Without changing anything, let everything be different," says Bresson (1975, 136; qtd. at the very beginning (1a), but transformed as follows by Godard: "Change nothing, so that everything is different"). This paradox governs the work of the historian. For the film historian, this work is essentially based on editing, and editing is, in the literal sense, a matter of manipulation. But what kind of manipulation are we talking about here? Is it the one that deceives, that "makes people believe" and "makes the images say" what they don't say? This manipulation implies deception that conceals the transformation process as skillfully as possible. Things are manipulated, archi-manipulated, but the transformation process is far from being camouflaged; on the contrary, it is in pole position. Godard manipulates words, images and sounds, and by means
of substitution, the driving force of this visual thinking, he questions the mass of documents that constitute the very material of history. Everything in Godard's film is treated as archives, evidence and historical testimonies. The proximity between fiction and archival documents corresponds to a concept of history which does not intend to establish a hierarchy between the nature of the challenges left by time.

If a fiction commonly tells a story and if the archives allow the historian to make history, the “s” in Godard’s title tells us that not all stories are fragments on the periphery of History with a capital H, because History is made up of these stories. In other words, this History is not made up of a single, hard, fixed and homogeneous nucleus, but of disconnected electrons which are what is called the *weak force* or *weak interaction* in physics. From a historical point of view, this weak force is for Godard the very material that History is made of.

Fragments out of context and dispersion mode formally agree with his conception of history. His HISTOIRE(S) are inseparable from the very notion of diaspora. The diaspora is a form of wandering linked to exile, i.e., to loss, however distant and indeterminable it may be. The HISTOIRE(S) Godard tells are the stories of everything that will wander forever in History and of everything that has never been able to hope for any deliverance. These “stories of wandering,” to use Perec’s (1980) beautiful expression, are the weak forces of History. Forces, because, for Benjamin as for Godard, disaster and injustice is the unremitting and lasting rule. Weakness, because they concern the victims, the oppressed of all times and everything that has never received the slightest assistance in History. The only possible help for these eternal wanderings is to be saved from oblivion.

Dispersion is thus the method adopted here by the historian who composes history with everything that is forever dispersed in the maze of time. The historian is inhabited by a feeling of melancholic loss: in order to “relive the past” and to grasp “the true historical image,” he must go through the “method of intropathy and of *acedia* [...] a sadness that renders mute” (Benjamin 1971, 187). Without testing such a method, we will have to be sensitive to it to test the historian’s theses. For those who want to venture into HISTOIRE(S), it will be necessary to accept to leave things as they are: scattered, in suspense. At times we think we grasp the scope and implications of a metamorphosis that emerges from several elements brought into contact. But the following second there is almost nothing left, or rather nothing that can be formulated. It is this flash at lightning speed that makes the image of history, such as Benjamin describes it, appear: “The one that shines in a fleeting way” (1971, 187).
Godard's enterprise is thus, "in the face of an amnesic and illiterate world" to remember by questioning the images themselves, because the images remember and bear the imprints of their time. They are the very material of memory. All images are traces, and in the labyrinth of associations, archival images find disturbing equivalences with art images that have a separate status in HISTOIRE(S) because they allow us to "look at what we don't see" (Bernanos qtd. in 1a, 47'06). In other words, art images reveal in the form they invent what is latent and still invisible in their time, the possibilities of human beings and the world. Cinema images have an even more special status. Being the most realistic of all the arts and being the "only truly popular art," cinema could, Godard thought, have a real impact on the world. On the world indeed, because it has the ability to touch the masses. It is thus a historical force more than all the other arts. This is why "for him, the cinematographic act implies a strange responsibility" (Aumont 1999, 213). In 1998, cinema could still be the screen of the world's memory, but when it reached the dawn of the twentieth century, it had the potential to be more than a force of commemoration. In its early stages, it could, and did, according to Godard, intervene to prevent what it could see, glimpse and foresee with its "humble and tremendous power to transfigure." The tragedy of HISTOIRE(S) is partly due to this: cinema foresaw, saw and caught a glimpse, but nobody wanted to give it credence. Thus it witnessed the worst, and its power was transformed into a terrible weakness: the weakness of the spectator who knows and yet cannot prevent anything.

Right in the middle of the twentieth century, that which has permanently affected humanity in its flesh occurs: crime against humanity. Cinema witnessed the disaster, it warned, but nobody believed it. What is worse, long before that, it fabricated fictions that had repercussions on reality, Godard explains. This is why the tragedy of the century is, more than ever, the tragedy of cinema. Godard proposes this argument which establishes the tragedy and paradox of the "weak force" of his art: cinema has created myths that have inspired reality, and cinema has been unable to control its impact and its power of fascination on the masses. According to Godard, cinema has thus projected the worst of what humankind is capable of, in spite of itself. And the worst possible things happened. He is thus guilty and responsible, in spite of himself, for what has forever fractured the world and the idea of being human. What the cinema promised, turned against it and against reality at the same time. Faced with the most terrible thing that was predicted, cinema continued to forecast; faced with the worst thing that happened, it continued to show. But no one believed it. The power of cinema was transformed into pain and weakness. What cinema still has
left in HISTOIRE(S), while seemingly putting its final spotlight on us, can no longer save anything. It can only fight against oblivion and this is its “weak messianic force” (Benjamin 1971, 184).

Godard's argument seems disconcerting, but we can understand the gravity of the tone he adopts by testing his vision of history. His discourse is not that of a crank. He sincerely believes and shows that cinema could really influence the world. That's why all the HISTOIRE(S) revolve around the tragedy of the twentieth century and why the images of the camps produce the most violent turmoil in history and henceforth permeate all the images.

Godard's gaze acts as a substitute for cinema's eye, and cinema's eye acts as a substitute for the “eye of History.”<fnref n="4" /> This view of the work, that of the historian, sinks into a deep and painful “anamnesis movement” (Bergala 1999, 234) and projects all the sufferings of the past. It is all the injustices, all the victims, all the tragedies and all the assassinations that innervate the screen of the HISTOIRE(S) in “image blinkings” (Aumont 1999, 231), similar to the heartbeats of a dying man. That is why Godard sometimes has this strange expression when he looks away with a stupefied look and a half-opened mouth. He adopts the posture of the “angel of History,” without the wings, as described by Benjamin: “He stares wide-eyed, his mouth is open, his wings spread. This is what the angel of History must necessarily look like. He turns his face to the past [...] sees the pile of ruins, he would like to watch over the dead and gather the defeated” (1971, 189).

This “weak messianic force” that remains in cinema is precisely the possibility of bringing back images as we bring back the dead. In other words, the strength that remains in cinema is that of editing. Montage, which for Godard is “a resurrection of life” (1998, 246), never really existed. He explains that the big names of the silent movies came close, but that there was an unconscious reaction of fear. So “words specific to seeing” (Godard 1992, 139), i.e., the principle of coming together, could never be achieved. However, montage can neither save nor raise the dead, it can only bring them back by means of the image, by which it can still “save the honor of all reality.” “Bringing back” the oppressions of the past through images, this is how Godard understands Saint Paul's precept: “The image will come at the time of the resurrection.”

What cinema could do, it didn't. Cinema was not allowed to accomplish its purpose. Entertainment, “the power of Babylon,” the strong force, that of the powerful, was victorious over the power of revelation of the cinematographer.

<footnote n="4">4 Didi-Huberman (2003, 45) re-uses an old expression by Du Haillan.</footnote>
The powerful of this world exploited fiction to take “control of the universe.” Through the great ability of cinema to reproduce life, they *used reality* to exercise their power over the world, while the cinematographer promised to *present reality*. What remains of the cinematographer’s strength now concerns the past. The only resurrection of HISTOIRE(S) is that of montage. But its return is short-lived. All the images of HISTOIRE(S) seem to be the last flashes of the cinematographer. Its weak strength continues to reveal “what is unseen in the real world” (Aumont 1999, 23) and the terrible underside of time.

But when Godard tries to shed light on the present in the light of the past, when he thinks with words and not with images, it produces unfortunate accidents. Hiding behind the precepts and icons of the “holy Montage,” he slips in images of demonstrating Palestinians before tacking on the word “muslim” instead of the word “jew” on the image of an emaciated, dead body dragged by two kapos in the death camps. Here, Godard is no longer in the register of reconciliation, but in that of confusion. He begins by confusing all Muslims with Palestinians and ends with an insinuation that is still obscure and yet already too clear. When Godard confuses the current situation of the Palestinians with the fate of the Jews in the concentration camps during the Second World War, it is neither the “humble and tremendous power of transfiguration” of the cinema nor the “weak messianic force” of the montage at work, but a poor force. This poor force is deployed when ideology replaces thought and when the activist takes the place of the historian. Apart from this “monstrous capture” (Cohen-Halimi and Cohen, 2005, 301), where Godard has his say instead of letting the images talk, he lets cinema make history.

What cinema has not accomplished forever leaves a gaping openness and this gaping openness is that of HISTOIRE(S). Saving the honor of what is real does not mean saving what is real, because “the victims are really dead” (Horkheimer’s letter to Benjamin, dated March 16, 1937, qtd. in Benjamin 2002, 488). To save honor is to fight against oblivion, that is, to show what is suppressed in time and repressed in people’s consciences. In this respect, Godard’s gesture is an act of violence, it is an act of resistance: “A struggle against the murderers of Memory” (P. Vidal-Naquet qtd. in Didi-Huberman 2003, 129). He commits an act of violence through continuous remembrance. Each image of HISTOIRE(S) commemorates that which disgusts and shames: stifled screams, tortures, humiliated lives, uprooted lives. In these a-chronological HISTOIRE(S), all the images of the century are inevitably perceived through the prism of what has permanently fractured the century and the idea of humanity along with it: the Shoah.
The “true face” of History slips into the cracks of every splice. This face, which reflects all kinds of expressions, remains serious, irreparably serious. Even the brightest colors, the most languid dances, the purest faces, everything exhales mourning, cries, blood, murder. Each image mourns and conceals the dead, the screams for all eternity, injustices and all the disasters of history. Behind each image a symptom of horror that nothing masks shows through, that nothing erases and that always lasts. The eye of History has printed on the sensitive plate of his memory that which now permeates all things in the world.

The continuous commemoration and the position of the filmmaker/historian experiencing the sufferings of the past give HISTOIRE(s) an unquestionably religious character. The screen, where all the details of the memory of the world are projected into the infinite networks of its white canvas, is like a divination surface and the tone then becomes, in fade-in fade-out, messianic. But this mystical accent never arises as a foundation or as relief. The miracle of resurrection through the image never constitutes an explanation, an atonement or a solution. The historical undertaking does not aim to save anything, no redemption is possible. Godard is busy with history, not theology. There is no end to the sufferings of the past. History finds no salvation in any form of reconciliatory “beyond” unifying the world. The gaze once fixed on the work turns to the past, enters into a gigantic anamnesis and starts descending into the darkness of time. The only way to deliver the past is to fight against oblivion; such is the “weak messianic force” of cinema in his HISTOIRE(s).

*Translated by Naòmi Morgan*

## References and Further Reading

Aumont, Jacques. 1999. *Amnésies: Fictions du cinéma d'après Jean-Luc Godard*. Paris: P.O.L.

Benjamin, Walter. 1971. "Thèses sur la philosophie de l'histoire." In *L'Homme, le langage et la culture*. Paris: Denoël Gonthier.

—. 2002. *Paris, capitale du XXe siècle. Le livre des passages*. Paris: Cerf.

Bergala, Alain. 1999. *Nul mieux que Godard*. Paris: Cahiers du cinéma.

Bresson, Robert. 1975. *Notes sur le cinématographe*. Paris: Gallimard.

Cohen-Halimi, Michèle, and Francis Cohen. 2005. "Juifs, martyres, kamikazes: La monstrueuse capture. Question à Jean-Luc Godard." *Les Temps Modernes*, 1, no. 629: 301-310.
Didi-Huberman, Georges. 2003. *Images malgré tout*. Paris: Minuit.

Godard, Jean-Luc. 1992. "Le Refoulement des lois." Jean-Luc Godard's interview with Pierre Jacerme. *Revue internationale de psychanalyse*, no. 1.

—. 1998. "Le montage, la solitude et la liberté." In *Jean-Luc Godard par Jean-Luc Godard*. Vol. 2 (1984-1998), edited by Alain Bergala. Paris: *Cahiers du cinéma-Édition de l'Étoile*.

Perec, Georges, and Robert Bober. 1980. *Récits d'Ellis Island: Histoires d'errance et d'espoir*. Paris: INA, Éditions du Sorbier.

Rossellini, Roberto. 1984. *Le cinéma révélé*. Paris: *Cahiers du cinéma-Édition de l'Étoile*.

## About the Author

Céline Scemama (1972-2017) was a film scholar and Godard specialist. She obtained a doctorate from the Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Paris 1 in 2005 and compiled what has since become a standard reference work on Godard's demanding and densely layered masterpiece *HISTOIRE(S) DU CINÉMA: Histoire(s) du cinéma de Jean-Luc Godard: La force faible d'un art* (2006). By scrupulously deciphering the multiple cinematic, sonic and literary references contained in *HISTOIRE(S)*, she created a unique cinematographic criticism of Godard's work; an indispensable contribution to Godard studies and film and media studies in general. She is also the author of *Antonioni: Le désert figuré* (1998) and has appeared twice in the *Key Debates* (2011, 2014).