On Jean-Luc Godard's Sauve qui peut (la vie)

Film Studies For Free is delighted to pass on word of an excellent new website dedicated to the study of Jean-Luc Godard's 1980 film Sauve qui peut (la vie)/ Every Man for Himself / Slow Motion (co-scripted by Godard with Jean-Claude Carrière and Anne-Marie Miéville). The website joins existing, brilliant, online Godard resources, like Glen W. Norton's Cinema = Godard = Cinema, first established in 1996.

The new site is the Every Man For Himself Resource Archive that gathers links to (almost) every online item of note pertaining to this film in one, elegant, supremely useful space. This is a must-visit recommendation, especially given that this film has just been re-released in some cinemas (in a new 35mm print) in the USA.

Here are direct links to two articles on the film that EMFH doesn't yet list (but which FSFF is hopeful that it will add!)

• James Roy MacBean, 'Sauve qui peut (la vie): An Open Letter to Godard', Jump Cut, no. 31, March 1986, pp. 7-12 
• Richard Morris, '"To Realise the Ideal": Miscellaneous Remarks on Godard's Conceptual Processes Apropos of Sauve qui peut (la vie)', Film Studies, Vol. 5 (Winter 2004), (pp 1-7)

There is also a really interesting discussion by David Bordwell of studies of Godard's film online here:

• David Bordwell, 'Historical Poetics of Cinema', in The Cinematic Text: Methods and Approaches, ed. R. Barton Palmer ((New York: AMS Press, 1989) [scroll to p. 383]

There are also numerous references to Godard's film in the following online book (just search "Sauve" in your browser's "Find [on page]" facility: 

• Robert Philip Kolker, The Altering Eye: Contemporary International Cinema (1983)

Below are all the excellent scholarly essays that EMFH links to so far. These links take you to the relevant page of their website where you will be referred on to the items themselves:

• Thomas Albrecht, “Sauve qui peut (l’image): Reading for a Double Life,” Cinema Journal 30:2, Winter 1991. 
• Raymond Bellour, “I am an Image,” Camera Obscura 8/9/10, Fall 1982. 
• Alain Bergala and Leos Carax, “Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie): Une Journée de Tournage,” Cahiers du Cinéma 306 December 1979.   (French) 
• Janet Bergstrom, “Violence and Enunciation,” Camera Obscura 8/9/10, Fall 1982.
• Harmut Bitomsky, “Desperation Spawns Courage,” Filmkritik V. 25.9, 1981.  (German)
• Catherine Grant, "Home Movies: The Curious Cinematic Collaboration of Anne-Marie Miéville and Jean-Luc Godard," [pre-print draft] in Forever Gordard, ed. Temple, Williams and Witt, Black Dog Publishing, 2004.
• Peter Harcourt, “Le Nouveau Godard: An Exploration of Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie),” Film Quarterly V. 35.2 (Winter 1981/2).
• Elizabeth Lyon, “La Passion, c’est pas ca,” Camera Obscura 8/9/10, Fall 1982. 
• Colin MacCabe, “Slow Motion,” Screen 21.3, 1981. 
• Contance Penley, “Pornography Eroticism,” Camera Obscura 8/9/10, Fall 1982. 
• Robert Stam, “Jean-Luc Godard’s Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie),” Millennium Film Journal, Fall 1981/2, 10/11. 
• Hanns Zischler, “Godard’s Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie) – Report on the Director’s Press Conference, Zurich, Jan 19, 1981,” Filmkritik V.25.9, 1981. (German)

For Ever Godard

My recommendation today, another addition to Film Studies For Free's listing of scholarly resources in audio or audiovisual form (also see HERE and HERE), is for podcasts of audio-recordings of several sessions from the 2001 For Ever Godard conference. The link (to a MySpace page, which takes a while to load) is HERE.

The site's blurb about the conference reads as follows:

FOR EVER GODARD was a four-day international conference held at Tate Modern, London, 21-24 June 2001. It is the first event of its kind ever to be devoted to Godard's work in Britain. It brings together both well-established commentators and the younger generation of critics working in the fields of film and television, art history, cultural studies, philosophy, music, and literature. It draws on talent from many different countries and from different intellectual backgrounds.

There are also lots of Godard-related YouTube videos embedded on this site, as well as some great images. There's a good review of the conference by Maximilian Le Cain at senses of cinema HERE (and a detailed review of the related book collection For Ever Godard, on Film-Philosophy, 10. 1, by Katerina Loukopoulou HERE).

Film Studies For Free's principle of full disclosure requires me to note my own involvement in the For Ever Godard conference; I was a member of the advisory committee, and was also lucky enough to chair a great session on Godard's lyricism with both Adrian Martin (see a lovely article by Martin on Godard in a special issue on 'French Cinema Present And Past' at senses of cinema HERE; as an aside, I highly recommend girish's enlightening interview with Martin HERE) and André Habib (see a good piece by Habib on Godard at senses of cinema HERE). I also contributed to the published collection of work which was based on the conference, from which sample spreads can downloaded for free via this link HERE.

[An addition to the original posting: I was just exploring some of the YouTube Godard links and came across one I wished I'd known about when I was writing my chapter for the For Ever Godard book, which dealt with Godard's collaboration with his partner Anne-Marie Miéville on Sauve qui peut (la vie) and other films: this really interesting 8 minute long video of Godard promoting Sauve qui peut (la vie) in America in 1980 (posted on YouTube by evillights)]

Godard Interviewed by Deanna Kamiel - 1980