PHRASES presents the spoken language from six films by Godard completed between 1991 & 2001, during his “years of memory,” films & videos made alongside and in the shadow of his major work from that time, Histoire(s) du cinema. Like Histoire(s), they offer meditations on the tides of history, the fate of nations, the work of memory, the power of cinema, and, ultimately, the nature of love. Gathered here, in written form, they are words without images: not exactly screenplays, not exactly poetry, something else entirely. Godard himself described them enigmatically: “Not books. Rather recollections of films, without the photos or the uninteresting details… Only the spoken phrases. They offer a little prolongation. One even discovers things that aren’t in the films in them, which is rather powerful for a recollection. These books aren’t literature or cinema. Traces of a film…”
