JEAN-LUC GODARD AND THE DILEMMA OF POSTCOLONIAL CINEMA

Abstract

If “every tracking shot is a moral act,” as Jean-Luc Godard has once remarked, then filmmaking in the aftermath of colonialism must have posed numerous challenges to a fresh offbeat Nouvelle Vague director like himself. How is filmmaking possible after colonialism? What needs to be changed, salvaged, ridiculed? How does technique work thematically and content stylistically to “track,” with candid morality, the state of art and politics in postcolonial France? This is what this paper is about.