Une catastrophe

Viennale 08 Trailer

In order to visualize how history functions and why mankind, talented to beauty, so willingly works on its own (not at all beautiful) abolition, we just briefly have to change perspectives. And that is Jean-Luc Godard´s trick: he cannot separate politics from art, as he sees the one reflected in the other. He demonstrates how Howard Hawks is connected with Marx, and the Shoah with Bach. In this sense, Une catastrophe, Godard´s trailer for the VIENNALE 2008, is extremely complex and at the same time completely serene, as if it had all the time in the world: Following in the tradition of Godard´s opus magnum, Histoire(s) du cinéma, the art and film-historical mini assemblage takes us from a dramatic moment in Eisenstein´s Battleship Potemkin (1925) and garish-colored video war images to an extended kissing scene, played in super slow motion, from the famous Berlin romance Menschen am Sonntag (1929). On the same note: the groaning of female tennis players serving or returning balls, a Low German love poem ("Dat du min Leevsten büst") and the beginning of Robert Schumann´s piano cycle "Scenes from Childhood". Une catastrophe has an air of resignation but is not entirely without hope: From a perspective of war, love can be reached via a detour of art in 63 seconds.

(Stefan Grissemann)

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Une Catastrophe (Jean-Luc Godard, Switzerland / Austria)
Godard’s trailer for the 2008 Viennale is, like so many of that festival's commission's, much more than a trailer. Even while clocking in at a mere one minute, Une Catastrophe is indubitably a contribution to the late Godardian corpus, and although it is a 35mm film, it is fundamentally steeped in the man’s hybrid film-video aesthetics. Not nearly as intricate or convulsive as Origin of the 21st Century, nor as magnificently dialectical in its articulation of abstraction and materialism as the "Hell" sequence of Notre Musique, there is nonetheless a stern poetic density here that moves in multiple directions, from the tragicomic power in the opening seconds, when Eisenstein's Odessa steps massacre is sonically equated to a tennis match, through the grim neon procession of tanks and ordnance. All these images are leading to a slow motion rendering of the gestures of cinematic heterosexual affection (joined to a love poem in low German), a kind of achievement of eternal cinema-stasis. The micro-montage delivers Godard’s crucial but offhand life lesson -- "A catastrophe is the first strophe of a love poem” – in much the way that someone looks back at you before disappearing down the jetway.

http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/1009
Orig. Title
Une catastrophe (Viennale Trailer 2008)
Year
2008
Country
Austria
Duration
1 min
Director
Jean-Luc Godard
Category
Trailer
Orig. Language
No Dialogue
Downloads
Une catastrophe (Image)
Credits
Director
Jean-Luc Godard
Production
Viennale - Vienna Int'l Filmfestival
Available Formats
Digital File (prores, h264)
35 mm (Distribution Copy)
Aspect Ratio
1:1,37
Sound Format
Dolby stereo
Frame Rate
24 fps
Color Format
colour
Festivals (Selection)
2009
Jeonju - International Film Festival
Onion City - Film Festival Chicago
Toronto - Int. Film Festival
Montréal - Festival du Nouveau Cinéma
2010
Tokyo - Ebisu Int. Festival
Rotterdam - Int. Filmfestival
Miami - Film Festival
Athens - Film Festival
2011
Buenos Aires Festival Int. de Cine Independiente BAFICI