Book + Film Season Announcement: Jean-Luc Godard's Unmade and Abandoned Projects

[Michael Witt]

Dear Godardians,

I am pleased to announce the publication of my book JEAN-LUC GODARD’S UNMADE AND ABANDONED PROJECTS:

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/jeanluc-godards-unmade-and-abandoned-projects-9781350494596/

In this book I adopt a ‘negative’ approach to film and media history, examining what wasn’t possible, what didn’t happen, what failed to materialise, and why. It offers an evidence-based investigation of Jean-Luc Godard’s vast and varied ‘non-corpus’ of unrealised and unfinished projects from the late 1940s to the 2020s that for various reasons failed to see the light of day. These range from films, videos and television programmes to books, a literary translation, plays, exhibitions, CDs and CD-ROMs, a camera, a film journal and even an architectural maquette.

I examine these multifarious projects in six perspectives, which provide the book’s chapter titles: literature, cinema, theatre, television, politics and history. Detailed case studies include Godard’s early unfilmed scripts, L’ÉCRIVAIN (‘The writer’, 1961-64), abandoned versions of the project that became MASCULIN FÉMININ (1964-65), unmade adaptations of books by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, projects on the Holocaust in the 1960s, Jean Giraudoux’s POUR LUCRÈCE (DUEL OF ANGELS, 1962-68), ONE AMERICAN MOVIE (1968), a collaborative television experiment in Quebec (1968), UN FILM FRANÇAIS ( ‘A French film’, Dziga Vertov group, 1968–71), the book À BAS LE CINÉMA (DÉBUT D’UNE LUTTE PROLONGÉE) (‘Down with cinema (start of a prolonged struggle)’, Dziga Vertov group, 1969), JUSQU’À LA VICTOIRE : LES MÉTHODES DE PENSÉE ET DE TRAVAIL DE LA RÉVOLUTION PALESTINIENNE (‘Until victory: the methods of thinking and working of the Palestinian revolution’, Dziga Vertov group, 1969-74), the experimental video MOI JE (‘Me I’, 1973), attempts to develop a new lightweight 35mm camera (the 8-35) with Jean-Pierre Beauviala (1977-83), NAISSANCE (DE L’IMAGE) D’UNE NATION (‘Birth (of the image) of a nation’) in Mozambique (1977-80), projects with Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios (1978-81), abandoned approaches to KING LEAR (1982-86), PAS UN DÎNER DE GALA/UN FAMEUX DÉBAT (‘Not a gala dinner’/‘A famous debate’) with Claude Lanzmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy (1999), the COLLAGE(S) DE FRANCE exhibition and its many unmade variations (2001-6), collaborative ventures with Marcel Ophuls (2002-10), plans to adapt Racine’s BÉRÉNICE in the 1960s, 1990s and 2010s, and more. The book also contains a full annotated list of Godard’s hundreds of unmade and abandoned ventures as an appendix.

The research for this book, which was made possible by a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship, involved work in archives and private collections in various countries over several years. I hope it will be of interest, beyond Godard studies and film, television and media studies, to scholars and students interested in historiography more generally, as well as to those working in fields such as French and Francophone studies, adaptation studies, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, media archaeology, art history, failure studies, literary studies and theatre/performance studies.

It is a substantial book (262,000 words), which is currently available as a hardback and e-book. It’s also very expensive and will be beyond the means of most individual book buyers, although a more affordable paperback is forthcoming at a later date. Meanwhile, I would be grateful if those in a position to do so might consider recommending it to their institutional libraries. Many thanks.

Endorsements

‘A dazzling array of Godardian might-have-beens from the most meticulous and thoughtful of Godard scholars.’

• Jonathan Rosenbaum, Film Critic

‘An astounding scholarly achievement. The depth and rigour of Witt’s primary research is breathtaking. Once again, Witt completely reconfigures the Godardian corpus, while making a significant contribution to media archaeology and to the study of ‘orphaned’, lost or forgotten cultural objects.’

• Michael Temple, Emeritus Professor, Birkbeck College, London

‘Michael Witt has set a high bar for what it means to analyze a film/media director’s body of work, and to locate its heteroclite traces in order to do so. He has accomplished the Herculean task of covering ALL of Godard’s work of this kind, giving it order, showing us its logic, understanding the zigzag ways of Godard’s thinking through ideas, sometimes for decades. This is a book to come back to, and to treasure as an absolutely reliable resource.’

• Janet Bergstrom, Research Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, UCLA

Film Season

To coincide with the publication of the book, I am curating a film season at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London (November 2025 – June 2026):

https://ica.art/films/jean-luc-godard-unmade-and-abandoned

This season begins on Tuesday 25 November at 6.30pm with a special 35mm screening, which to the best of my knowledge has never been done before: the creation of what Godard proposed in 1967 as his 'adaptation' of William Faulkner's novel THE WILD PALMS, which involves showing his two films MADE IN USA and TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER (2 OU 3 CHOSES QUE JE SAIS D'ELLE) as a single integrated work, their narratives intertwined (a reel from MADE IN USA followed by a reel from TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER, then a reel from MADE IN USA, and so on).

The season continues on Tuesday 9 December with a session devoted to Godard's approach to literary adaptation through reference to his relationship with Guy de Maupassant. This includes screenings of THE CRIMSON CURTAIN (LE RIDEAU CRAMOISI, Alexandre Astruc, 1953), ONE LIFE (UNE VIE, Alexandre Astruc, 1958), A FLIRTATIOUS WOMAN (BASED ON MAUPASSANT) (UNE FEMME COQUETTE (D'APRÈS MAUPASSANT), Jean-Luc Godard, 1956), and MASCULINE FEMININE: IN 15 ACTS (MASCULIN FÉMININ: QUINZE FAITS PRÉCIS, Jean-Luc Godard, 1966).

Only these two opening sessions are up on the ICA website so far. The season will continue in the spring with a further 11 sessions, each of which sets a selection of Godard’s completed films from the 1950s to the 2000s in dialogue with others by him and a range of different directors as a means of thinking about a specific Godardian unrealised work, or category of unfinished project, and its relationship with his completed output. These screenings, details of which will be available on the ICA website in due course, will be devoted to the themes of 'Theatre', 'American Revolution', 'Palestine', 'The Remake', 'The Audiovisual Script', 'Shakespeare', 'Literary Adaptation II: Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz', 'History', 'Exhibiting Cinema', 'Animals', and 'Films not Made by Jean-Luc Godard'.

I hope that some of you might be able to attend some of these screenings.

Best wishes,

Michael

Michael Witt (he/him)

Professor of Cinema

School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

University of Roehampton | London | SW15 5PH

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