“History(s) of Cinema” is based on a project of lectures given by Godard in 1978. From them, and in the course of almost twenty years of archival work and accumulation of documents, the author composed the poem-essay that is published here and that, with various modifications, served as the screenplay for the film of the same name. Insofar as cinema is made of the same material as history (time, projection and memory), it is possible to make a history of the twentieth century by making a history of cinema. Godard digs into the audiovisual and literary memory of the century, and rewrites its history through an archaeological procedure that interweaves layers of texts and images that the words of the poem never cease to evoke. The beauty of “History(s) of Cinema” is paradoxical, funereal and vital at the same time, because while it chants the end of the century and its art, it announces the possibility of a cinema to come.
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