Compression Alphaville de Jean-Luc Godard (1995)

Overview

To mark the 30th anniversary of Kodak's invention of the Super 8 format, the Close Encounters of the 8th Type in Tours, France, asked filmmakers to make a film in this format. I was the only filmmaker to respond favorably to this request, and I created a tribute to 1965 by "compressing" a cult film from that year: Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville . Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville Compression is a 25-fold reduction of Alphaville , the 1965 masterpiece Jean-Luc Godard directed, starring Anna Karina, Eddie Constantine, Howard Vernon, and Akim Tamiroff, from a runtime of 1 hour 30 minutes into a 4-minute film. The film is "compressed" in the manner of a work by César. But unlike the work of this artist, who compressed everyday objects, Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville Compression compresses an artistic object! The feat and challenge of Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville Compression was to create a total compression: in this film, not a single shot from the original film is missing!

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