1 A.M. (aka One American Movie) was shot in 1968, abandoned by Godard in 1969, and then later resurrected and re-edited by his collaborator on the film D.A. Pennebaker. Intercut with film footage of Godard at work on the film and re-named 1 P.M. (One Parallel Movie), it was finally released in 1972.

An abstract and maddening mash-up of cinéma vérité, documentary footage and goofy political theater, 1 P.M. is another attempt by a European director to wrap his head around America’s turbulent Sixties’ political scene and pretty much failing. Even with input from ace documentarian Pennebaker, the movie seems remote from its material. But despite many yawn-inducing moments of pretentiousness and arthouse vagueness, there are still plenty of interesting bits and pieces in the film to sustain one’s interest. Specifically, an interview with Eldridge Cleaver, a rambling but fascinating sequence involving Tom Hayden. Rip Torn’s absurd Native American routine and a Manhattan-rooftop performance by Jefferson Airplane of “House at Pooneil Corners,” which ends with the cops busting the band and film crew.
 

 
Michael Baute and Bettina Blickwede have taken moving imagery from 47 films directed by Jean Luc Godard and created loops based on recurring motifs in the director’s work. These include automobiles, guns, color, faces, sound and more.

Using split screens, the loops act as a kind of optical music in which themes and colors riff off of each other in a Godardian eye view of the modern world.

For the story behind the creation of these loops and to see more of them visit Fandor’s website.

Godard is one of the prime architects of cinema as language, a language in which vowels and consonants find their counterparts in color, light and movement. Rimbaud spoke of this derangement of the senses a century ago. Godard acted on it, but without Rimbaud’s symbolist lyricism or surrealism. Godard, like Warhol, let the images speak for themselves, without embellishment. And speak they do, as clearly as any alphabet based on the interaction between teeth, tongue and breath. If Gertrude Stein had made films instead of books, she would have found in Godard a kindred spirit. “A gun is a gun is a gun is a gun.”
 

 
Coming to Paris in January,