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Godard's Political Film Manifesto

Jean-Luc Godard argues for the necessity of making political films and doing so in a politically conscious manner, highlighting the conflict between idealistic and Marxist approaches. He emphasizes that the struggle between old and new ideas is fundamentally a class struggle, where the proletarian perspective seeks to actively transform the world rather than merely describe it. Godard asserts that true political filmmaking involves understanding and engaging with the contradictions of class relations and revolutionary history.

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Kyle Riley
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151 views2 pages

Godard's Political Film Manifesto

Jean-Luc Godard argues for the necessity of making political films and doing so in a politically conscious manner, highlighting the conflict between idealistic and Marxist approaches. He emphasizes that the struggle between old and new ideas is fundamentally a class struggle, where the proletarian perspective seeks to actively transform the world rather than merely describe it. Godard asserts that true political filmmaking involves understanding and engaging with the contradictions of class relations and revolutionary history.

Uploaded by

Kyle Riley
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What is to be done

Jean-Luc Godard, “What Is to Be Done?”


Jean-Luc Godard, “What Is to Be Done?”

1. We must make political films.


2. We must make films politically.
3. 1 and 2 are antagonist to each other and belong to two opposing conceptions of the world.
4. 1 belongs to the idealistic and metaphysical conception of the world.
5. 2 belongs to the Marxist and dialectical conception of the world.
6. Marxism struggles against idealism and the dialectical against the metaphysical.
7. This struggle is the struggle between the old and the new, between new ideas and old ones.
8. The social existence of men determines their thought.
9. The struggle between the old and the new is the struggle of classes.
10. To carry out 1 is to remain a being of the bourgeois class.
11. To carry out 2 is to take up a proletarian class position.
12. To carry out 1 is to make descriptions of situations.
13. To carry out 2 is to make a concrete analysis of a concrete situation.
14. To carry out 1 is to make British Sounds.
15. To carry out 2 is to struggle for the showing of British Sounds on English television.
16. To carry out 1 is to understand the law of the objective world in order to explain the world.
17. To carry out 2 is to understand the law of the objective world in order to actively transform that
world.
18. To carry out 1 is to describe the wretchedness of the world.
19. To carry out 2 is to show the people in struggle.
20. To carry out 2 is to destroy 1 with the weapons of criticism and self-criticism.
21. To carry out 1 is to give a complete view of events in the name of truth in itself.
22. To carry out 2 is not to fabricate over-complete images of the world in the name of relative truth.
23. To carry out 1 is to say how things are real (Brecht).
24. To carry out 2 is to say how things really are (Brecht).
25. To carry out 2 is to edit a film before shooting it, to make it during filming and to make it after
the filming (Dziga Vertov).
26. To carry out 1 is to distribute a film before producing it.
27. To carry out 2 is to produce a film before distributing it, to learn to produce it following the
principle that: it is production which commands distribution, it is politics which commands
economy.
28. To carry out 1 is to film students who write: Unity – Students – Workers.
29. To carry out 2 is to know that unity is a struggle of opposites (Lenin), to know that two are in
one.
30. To carry out 2 is to study the contradictions between the classes with images and sounds.
31. To carry out 2 is to study the contradictions between the relationships of production and the
productive forces.
32. To carry out 2 is to dare to know where one is, and where one has come from, to know one’s
place in the process of production in order then to change it.
33. To carry out 2 is to know the history of revolution struggles and be determined by them.
34. To carry out 2 is to produce scientific knowledge of revolution struggles and of their history.
35. To carry out 2 is to know that film making is a secondary activity, a small screw in the revolution.
36. To carry out 2 is to use images and sounds as teeth and lips to bite with.
37. To carry out 1 is only to open the eyes and the ears.
38. To carry out 2 is to read the reports of comrade Kiang Tsing.
39. To carry out 2 is to be militant.

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