The Image Book

The legendary Jean-Luc Godard adds to his legacy with this daring collagist film essay, an inquiry into the history of the moving image and a commentary on the contemporary world. Akin to the director’s monumental Histoire(s) du Cinema project, The Image Book is composed of fragments and clips from classic films which Godard digitally alters, bleaches, and washes, creating juxtapositions and connections that reflect what and how he sees in both the images and the world around him. Moving from film history to the horrors of Hiroshima and Auschwitz to contemporary questions about orientalism and the Arab world, the film reckons with the power of images and their relationship to reality. Godard’s own voice guides us through associative musings on time, space, meaning, and violence, a commanding yet tenuous poet-narrator whose mortality lurks at the edge of every frame and cut.

“A dense visual and aural collage that I’ve seen twice and expect to see several times more.” —Manohla Dargis, The New York Times