Director Jean-Luc Godard, iconic figure of Novelle Vague, the movement that revolutionized cinema in the 1950s and 1960s, died Tuesday at the age of 91.
The news is advanced by the French newspaper Liberation, citing close sources.
Jean-Luc Godard, born on December 3, 1930 in the Île-de-France region, is considered one of the most radical and disruptive directors in the history of cinema, known for classics such as “The Besieged” (his first feature film , in 1960), “O Desprezo” (1963), with Brigitte Bardot, and “Pedro, o Louco” (1965).
In statements to TSFproducer Paulo Branco describes the director as a great influence on several generations: “Jean-Luc Godard is someone to whom all of us who have worked in cinema for the last 60 years owe everything.”
“He was the first to liberate the cinematographic language. He was the one who most understood and admired the classical language in cinema and he was the one who, in a certain way, gave cinema freedom ”all over the world, making all modern cinema. he has changed radically, “departing from the usual canons”.
António Preto, director of Casa Manoel de Oliveira, also remembers Godard as “an inescapable figure in 20th century cinema”.
“He was someone who permanently took cinema to the limits of what was understood as cinema, seeking ‘contamination’ with other fields”, such as television and other formats. He “he was a great inventor of forms” and author of “a monumental work” that leaves as a legacy “an ethics of cinema”.
The filmmaker of “Nova Vaga”, an expression associated with free love, the sexual revolution and the new political and social positions that marked May 68, was controversial in Portugal in the 1980s due to the screening of “Je vous salue, Marie “, which deserved a great mobilization by Catholic institutions.
Among his most recent films are “Cinema of Socialism” (2010) and “Goodbye to Language” (2014).
Godard had a long and rewarding career, having won the award for best director in Berlin for “O Acossado”, an honorary Oscar, presented in 2010 at a ceremony he did not attend. Nine of his films were in the official selections at the Cannes Film Festival and six in Venice.
Source: TSF
