14.09.2022 | Artist
From Vivre sa vie to Notre Musique
Master filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, one of the most relentlessly creative artists in any idiom, has died, aged 91. Highly prolific, both provocative and inspiring, operating outside the mainstream for his whole life, the French-Swiss director followed his own unique path, making films in which poetic, political, reflective, and experimental elements coexist. His films, he once said, “may suggest frameworks for thinking.”
Manfred Eicher: “This sad message about Jean-Luc reaches me in Tallinn.” Eicher recalls seeing JLG’s Vivre sa vie (My Life to Live) in 1962. “It had a profound impact on me, which really lasted to this day. A quiet film, leaving things unsaid. Godard was a master at that from the beginning. I always considered him a mentor, long before we met, and his artistic work was often a point of reference. Later it was enlightening to watch him at work and in the studio in Rolle, while listening together, and finding the music for his films.”
From 1990, Godard began to incorporate music from ECM in his cinema films, short films and video essays, starting with Nouvelle Vague, and continuing with Histoire(s) du Cinéma, Notre Musique, Allemagne année 90 neuf zero, JLG/JLG, Hélas pour moi, For Ever Mozart, The Old Place, De l’origine de XXIe siècle, Je vous salue, Sarajevo, Le Livre d’image, and more.