Subscribe to watch - 14-day free trial, then £4.99 a month
British Sounds
Jean-Luc Godard brings his firebrand political cinema to the UK, exploring the revolutionary signals in late '60s British society, in this experimental documentary.
Documentary 1969 51 mins
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Overview
Jean-Luc Godard brings his firebrand political cinema to the UK, exploring the revolutionary signals in late '60s British society. Constructed as a montage of various disconnected political acts (in line with Godard's then appropriation of Soviet director Dziga Vertov's agitprop techniques), it combines a diverse range of footage, from students discussing The Beatles to the production line at the MG factory in Oxfordshire, burnished with onscreen political sloganeering.
One of two films shot in the UK during Godard's late '60s phase (the other being the Rolling Stones collaboration, Sympathy for the Devil), British Sounds was originally commissioned by London Weekend Television, who then refused to screen it. It was later released under the title See You at Mao but has since been difficult to see until its rerelease in 2016. Like many of Godard's late-1960s ventures, it remains a time-capsule of political thought that might seem alien to today's viewers, but for British audiences it's also the most intriguing and accessible of Godard's 'Dziga Vertov Group' films.
strong language, nudityRelated
Documentary
Our New President
Documentary 2018 78 mins Director: Maxim Pozdorovkin
The Russian media's obsession with the election of Donald Trump is told entirely through clips, in this fascinating essay on news bias, pop culture and the power of images.
From Caligari to Hitler: German Cinema in the Age of the Masses
Documentary 2014 114 mins Director: Rüdiger Suchsland
Rüdger Suchsland’s 2014 documentary on the social and cultural impact of German cinema during the Weimar Republic.
Celluloid Man
Documentary 2012 156 mins Director: Shivendra Singh Dungarpur
A tribute to film archivist and obsessive cinephile P.K. Nair, and his long, hard fight to preserve India's precious film heritage.
The Propaganda Game
Documentary 2015 94 mins Director: Álvaro Longoria
Spanish documentary filmmaker Álvaro Longoria is our guide around the most secretive state on earth – North Korea.
Power in Our Hands
Documentary 2015 75 mins Director: Angela Spielsinger
Ground-breaking documentary that uses archive film to tell the story of the British Deaf community’s fight for civil rights.
A Bagful of Fleas
Documentary 1962 43 mins Director: Vera Chytilová
Věra Chytilová's 'fictionalised documentary' uses non-actors to portray girls' lives in the cotton mills of Náchod.
Experimenta
Goltzius and the Pelican Company
Biopic 2012 117 mins Director: Peter Greenaway
An artist stages a series of erotic dramatisations illustrating sexual taboos from the Old Testament, in this startling and shocking return from director Peter Greenaway.
Visions of Ecstasy
Drama 1989 20 mins Director: Nigel Wingrove
Nigel Wingrove's experimental depiction of the erotic imaginings of the 16th Century Carmelite nun remains the only film ever to banned under Britain's blasphemy laws.
The Fall of the House of Usher
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1980 16 mins Director: Jan Svankmajer
The first of Švankmajer's 'tactile experiments', the subject chosen partly because the title was on an official list of 'approved' texts. In this version there are no humans, just a brief glimpse of a live raven as the camera roams around an eerie derelict house.
Silence
Drama 2011 84 mins Director: Pat Collins
Pat Collins' film, following a sound recordist around western Ireland in an intriguing mix of fiction and documentary, makes us really look and listen
Le quattro volte
Drama 2010 84 mins Director: Michelangelo Frammartino
Michelangelo Frammartino's quirky, wordless account of rural Calabrian life is elegant, touching and funny, a philosophical poem to enduring tradition
Sleep Furiously
Documentary 2007 90 mins Director: Gideon Koppel
Gideon Koppel’s charming documentary about a small farming community in mid-Wales, observing the unalterable rhythms of country life and the monthly visits of a mobile library.
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
Struggle in Italy
Drama 1969 60 mins Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Godard's case study of an Italian girl's inner struggle to reconcile her revolutionary intent with her ingrained bourgeois tendencies.
Wind from the East
Drama 1969 93 mins Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin's radical film deconstructs both a factory strike and the Hollywood western - simultaneously.
A Film Like Any Other
Documentary 1968 107 mins Director: Jean-Luc Godard
The first film in Jean-Luc Godard's 'radical' period finds the director rejecting established notions of narrative and authorship to present a dialectic response to the events of May '68.
Vladimir and Rosa
1970 96 mins Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Godard recreates the trial of the Chicago Eight (charged with protesting the 1968 Democratic Party convention) in typically playful, anarchic and confrontational style.
Breathless / À bout de souffle
Film noir 1960 90 mins Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard’s extraordinary debut feature, an insouciant and iconoclastic crime film that paved the way for the French New Wave.
Le Mépris
Drama 1963 103 mins Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard conducts an autopsy of love and the creative process, as a boorish film producer dismantles a seemingly strong marriage.
New
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
Comedy 2005 154 mins Director: Cristi Puiu
Cristi Puiu's multiple award-winning drama about a seriously ill man caught in an absurdist bureaucratic nightmare over the course of one night.
Our New President
Documentary 2018 78 mins Director: Maxim Pozdorovkin
The Russian media's obsession with the election of Donald Trump is told entirely through clips, in this fascinating essay on news bias, pop culture and the power of images.
From Caligari to Hitler: German Cinema in the Age of the Masses
Documentary 2014 114 mins Director: Rüdiger Suchsland
Rüdger Suchsland’s 2014 documentary on the social and cultural impact of German cinema during the Weimar Republic.
Varieté
Drama 1925 94 mins Silent Director: E.A. Dupont
This under-appreciated classic of German silent cinema stars Emil Jannings as Boss, a middle-aged circus acrobat whose life is derailed by a seductive stranger (Lya de Putti).
Westfront 1918
War 1930 96 mins Director: G.W. Pabst
Four infantrymen on the Western Front suffer the everyday hardships and insanity of trench warfare, in G.W. Pabst's anti-war classic.
The Proposition
Western 2006 104 mins Director: John Hillcoat
John Hillcoat and Nick Cave's brilliant, brutal bushranger western, with Guy Pearce as the outlaw tasked with tracking down his psychopathic elder brother (Danny Huston).