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Abstract: Can cinema testify to the political injustices of its historical moment? Departing from a close reading of Jean-Luc Godard's Film socialisme (2010), and in particular the film's representation of Palestine, the following article argues that this question connects Godard's early work, through his video period, to his recent engagement with digital technologies.
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Godard's 2010 Film socialisme carries the crisis of representation into the digital age. In doing so, the film forms a response toward the director's preceding feature Notre musique (2004). In Notre musique, we at one point see Godard, played by himself, lecturing at the European Literary Encounters conference in Sarajevo. At the end of this lecture, which is entitled "Shot/Reverse-Shot," a Bosnian woman, via an interpreter, asks Godard: "Monsieur Godard, que pensezvous, est-ce que les nouvelles pétites caméras numériques pourront sauver le cinéma?" ("Mister Godard, what do you think, will the new small digital cameras be able to save cinema?"). The film's diegetic answer, a long close-up of a silent Godard against the background of uncomfortable laughter and the sound of people leaving the room, is less telling than it appears. Godard, through his films and in interviews, has proclaimed "the death of cinema" numerous times and for many different reasons. Yet the stance he ultimately formulates in and through Notre musique in response to the question of whether the digital turn has perhaps come accompanied with renewed hope for cinema's future, remains ambiguous. While Godard, right before leaving Sarajevo, is sitting in an airport cafeteria, he is approached by a group of conference attendees. "De la part d'Olga," says one of the students as she hands the director a burned DVD, "c'est le film qu'elle a fait avec la pétite caméra" ("From Olga, it's the film she made with the small camera"). Godard is visibly pleased, Olga (Nade Dieu) being a young Israeli with whom Godard has had a brief encounter earlier in the film. In the next sequence we encounter the filmmaker at home, suggestively tending his garden. While watering his flowers he receives the news about Olga's death, upon which the film cuts to the young woman's path to paradise. The title of her film? Notre musique. This information can be gleaned...