A Kinoscope screening with students at The New School

     This past Tuesday night I was able and lucky enough to have attended an 8PM screening of Jean-Luc Godard's Vivre Sa Vie at The New School. Sponsored and run by Kinoscope, a student-lead organization founded by Pawel Wieszczecinski, the film was shown in Kellen Auditorium, a comfortable space where classes, screenings, and talks are often held (next month, Tabu, the recent film from Miguel Gomes, will screen as part of Kinoscope's next event). What made the night more special was the inclusion of its guest speaker, The New Yorker's Richard Brody, who was on hand to introduce the film and stick around to generously take as many questions about its production and thematic elements as were permitted. Author of "Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard," Brody is considered one of the authoritative voices on Godard's cinematic output, providing an abundance of behind-the-scenes information and useful historical context related to one of the French New Wave's most prolific and distinguished voices.

     "For me this is a major, perhaps Godard's most influential film," Brody noted in his introduction, "because he changes the cinematic paradigm. The change in paradigm may already have been underway, but I think that this is the film that makes [it] most explicit and pushes it to the furthest extreme that it had been pushed to at this point, mainly the transition from space to time as the fundamental medium in which the modern cinema is composed." Referencing the Brechtian-inspired tableaux-assembled structure as well as the lengthy duration of shots, Brody accessibly laid out the film for eager viewers (an almost full house) ready to experience the film for the first time.

     Personally speaking, it was my third viewing of the film and the most technical. One of the topics discussed in the proceeding discussion period was the influences of Vivre Sa Vie's camera movement and whether to categorize it as either motivated or unmotivated. Our conclusion? It is motivated by Godard's interests. That's explicitly true in this film, and it stood out to me this time around like never before. Such moments are clearly visible in scenes at the record shop where Nana works (as her friend reads from a romance novel, the camera pans to casual passerbys outside, unaware of the woman's pulpy retelling) and the opening scene between Nana and Paul at the pinball machine. 

     When a shoot-out takes place halfway through the film, the audible gun shots are felt visually via Godard's camera, resembling a rhythmically-enhanced "staccato" style editing technique. Quick cuts intensify the impact of the blasts heard off-screen.

     Asked about Godard's use of what David Bordwell describes as employment of intertextuality (a topic I covered here in relation to 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her), Brody noted that "all of Godard's films are madly, profusely, hysterically intertextual," going on to describe the significance of the name Paul (Godard's father's name) for male characters in many of the director's films, as well as Vivre Sa Vie's cameos by contemporaries such as Elia Kazan and fellow Cashiers du Cinema critic and friend, Andre. S. Labarthe. "[Godard] wanted to gather everything that was on his mind and put it into the film, whether it was a text, a piece of music, a friend..." Brody later mentioned, "and yet at the same time I do think he was very aware of what effect the more famous references had," i.e. Brigitte Bardot's brief appearance in Masculine Femine.

     An informative evening both casual and engaging, Kinoscope's screening demonstrated The New School students' desire for cinephile gatherings that serve as a place to view challenging work and to discuss it with a highly esteemed critic afterwards. The talkback after the film ran for a very rewarding fifty-five minutes, and I felt as though it could have continued on for at least another half hour. So here's to successful screenings in the future, Kinoscope, and to furthering a Cinema Studies presence within The New School's Media Studies department.