num_pages: 558
description: In 1978 just before returning to the international stage for the second phase of his career the worlds most renowned art-film director then and now Jean-Luc Godard improvised a series of fourteen one-hour talks at Concordia University in Montreal as part of a projected video history of cinema. These talks published in French in 1980 and long out of print have never before been translated into English. For this edition the faulty and incomplete French transcription has been entirely revised and corrected working from the sole videotape copies of the lectures housed in the Concordia University archives.For this project Godard screened for a dozen or so students his own famous films of the 1960swatching them himself for the first time since their productionalongside single reels of some of the films which most influenced his work (by Eisenstein Dreyer Rossellini the American directors of the 1950s and many others). Working at the dawn of the video age a technology which was to be essential to his completion of the project many years later as the visual essay Histoire(s) du cinma Godard used pieces of 35mm film projected in an auditorium to approximate the historical montage he was groping towards. He then held forth in an experience he describes as a form of public self-psychoanalysis on his personal and professional relationships (with Franois Truffaut Anna Karina Raoul Coutard film producers and audiences) working methods aesthetic preferences political beliefs and on the cusp of 50 his philosophy of life.The result is the most extensive and revealing account ever of his work and critical opinions. Never has Godard been as loquacious lucid and disarmingly frank as he is here. This volume is certain to become one of the great classics of film literature by perhaps the wittiest and most idiosyncratic genius cinema has known.Readers familiar with the Histoire(s) du cinma video project famous for its enigmatic juxtapositions of fragments of texts and images will find some of the same works discussed here providing an invaluable key to the meaning of Godards later collages.Two editions of the book will be printed: a sewn-binding cloth-covered library edition and a sewn-binding paperback with a thick (15 pt.) card cover that will not curl. Only the best-quality printing and binding materials and techniques are being used to create a handsome and durable volume in either edition. This will be one of the most attractive and well-made books you own. The book is 558 pages with 150000 words from Godards talks 30000 words of commentary and 80 full-page illustrations twenty-four of which are in Godards hand and the rest film stills he manipulated with a photocopier for the original edition of the book.As a bonus with every on-line purchase of the book a volume in caboose's new series Kino Agora will be given away free of charge. A new title in the series will be introduced every few months throughout 2012 and 2013 and shipped with the Godard. Kino-Agora titles are also available as e-books from Amazon and Apple.
language: English
title: Introduction to a True History of Cinema and Television
publisher: caboose