Original subtitles

Mr Golestan.

Mr Golestan.

Mr Golestan.

Are you there?

"As the crowd

gathered at the market of ignorance,

I didn't feel like

opening my shop."

Do you understand what he is saying?

You're not turning on the light?

Listen carefully:

"As people seek ignorance

by going to the market,

I can't even dare to open my shop."

That's great.

Isn't that similar to your story?

Not at all.

I did what I had to do and I continue.

"Of life, I'll only remember the poetry..."

Mr Golestan...

What's the point of being a poet

in troubled times?

First, turn on the light.

It was August 2014.

Was there less human pollution than today?

Certainly not.

Respect the very word of poetry.

Don't say it lightly.

Mr Golestan?

Is history repeating itself?

Already seen, no.

Already read, maybe.

And already said?

It has been said: "Everything is known by everybody

and not everybody is born yet."

One day, on a street in Paris,

an Indian astrologer came up to me.

He came to me.

You will see Robinson.

He will give you his words.

And it will happen on Friday.

Robinson?

Friday?

Ashi?

What are you doing?

A few days before,

I had written a letter to Jean-Luc Godard.

I told him: "Dear J.-L. Godard,

the voice behind this letter

may seem distant and even unknown to you."

I said that a meeting between Ebrahim Golestan and him

could have taken place in the 1960s,

but it didn't happen.

If this conversation has remained to this day

an imaginary archive...

Would this meeting happen?

This imaginary meeting?

After the revolutions,

the wars,

and other revolutions,

could this fantasy become real?

Let it become real.

Why Godard?

Because Godard.

Of course, I would do it.

But what would be

the starting point?

A meeting, maybe?

Whatever the form of the exchange,

it will be about cinema.

We're not talking about analysing the editing

or Eisenstein's quotes.

We don't care.

How is humanity represented in cinema?

What is the state of the human species today?

One afternoon, when I wasn't expecting anything,

the answer to my letter arrived.

Why not?

We should perhaps start a correspondence.

Maybe we will not correspond to one another.

Ebrahim can send me a letter by email on Friday,

and I'll answer next Friday, and so on.

So, see you Friday, Robinson!

2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,

9, 10, 12, 13, 14 and 15.

So the complete picture here.

And all the sound in these two boxes.

What did it say on the box?

There are 14 reels in all.

This is number 13 and 14.

- That's number 14. - Perfect.

We have good elements of "The House is Black",

but we don't have anything from "Marlik".

The film was at Technicolor's.

OK, but we don't even have a positive here.

It's been 38 years that we've all lived in this house.

Thirty-eight?

Thirty-eight, yes. The house needs work.

Wow!

Radio Lido.

Live from the 75th edition of the Venice Film Festival.

Let's go back to the cinema of Ebrahim Golestan,

filmmaker, writer and producer.

His film "Brick and Mirror"

was shot at the same time as Antonioni's L'Avventura.

Very politically active throughout his life,

he was a member of the Iranian Communist Party...

No.

No, you don't know him.

Pasolini says:

"I am a force from the past.

I see the twilights, the mornings over Rome,

the Ciociaria, the world,

as the first acts of post-history...

In search of brothers no longer alive."

The film boxes are gone.

Boxes?

THE FIRST

FRIDAY IN THE BOX

You have email.

Where did it go?

Open your inbox, please.

Doesn't it go without saying that you should, like a beggar,

extort the word from the fleeing gods?

It's loading...

There's nothing from Godard.

Yes, it's his address.

Wait, I'll open it.

There are three images attached.

FRITZ MAUTHNER LANGUAGE

FRIDAY #1 JLG TO EG "THE WORDKING CLASS"

The act of redemption

would be accomplished if one could drive criticism

till self death,

quietly desperate,

of our thinking/talking,

if we ought to not conduct that criticism

with words which have only

the appearance of life.

All the best, your boy Friday,

5 september 2014,

Jean-Luc Godard.

This story of self death,

it's just the snip of a scissor.

"Quietly desperate".

He's talking about his own story here,

his own character, from "Out of Breath".

He wants to run fast.

Very fast.

This is what it looks like.

Breathtaking.

He wants to run fast, until his last breath.

The act of redemption would be accomplished

if one could drive criticism till self death,

quietly desperate,

of our thinking/talking,

if we ought to not conduct that criticism with words

which have only the appearance of life.

Redemption is meaningless.

This is getting absurd.

Suicide, that's missing the point.

Totally inappropriate.

Suicide doesn't solve anything.

It only shortens the amount of time it takes to die.

It reduces the possibilities.

What self death?

What was that? I heard noises.

I just sneezed.

Very loudly, then.

I won't do it again.

I do not want to disturb you now,

but if some other day you could give me an hour...

One hour is too much!

Well, less then.

What's this about?

What are your questions?

As I said, it's for my PhD thesis

on the notion of early death

in contemporary literature.

What is this?

I don't understand what that means.

There are two types of early death:

physical and creative.

For example, Sadegh Hedayat died

early...

He killed himself!

And there is another example.

That of the writers who live a long time,

but don't produce anything any more.

Why would they?

What kind of production? I'm 96 years old.

I do this from morning to night.

Should I write yet another story

that nobody will understand?

I've already written enough of them.

What would be the point of publishing them?

They wouldn't be understood.

The Iranian readers don't understand my work.

The guy says to me:

"I am writing and working

on the youthful suicide."

Youthful, OK.

Why is he asking you about young people killing themselves?

- I just don't know. - OK.

Because the young who have killed themselves are not available.

I said: "I'm 95 years old and I have not killed myself."

This is the wrong kind of questions.

It is wrong.

But you're saying that he was more concerned...

- Shahi? - Yes?

Shall I serve tea?

A DAY LIKE

THE OTHERS

Oh, I know

how vain are all these deaths.

But...

I also know that when the time comes,

the little boy that I was

will be back, leading my life.

But we are alive.

You interrogate me with something not living.

You search inside of me something that can't live.

That's pain.

That's anxiety.

That's waiting.

When there is too much time

and when time is out of time.

Waiting.

The time it takes to wait is lost

to match the wait.

And the waiting, which takes place in time,

opens time to the absence of time

where there is no need to wait.

What play is this again?

"The Three Sisters",

"The Seagull",

or maybe "The Cherry Orchard", I don't know.

“Why do you always wear black?”

"I am mourning my youth.”

It's very beautiful.

Chekhov was an extraordinary man.

Friday, 12 September 2014.

Dear Jean-Luc...

No, sorry. You said it wrong.

- What did I say? - You said it the English way!

Really?

It happens.

FRIDAY #2 EG TO JLG REPLY

I received your package and the books.

I really enjoyed it.

Among the gifts you have kindly chosen for me,

there was a reproduction of a painting by Goya,

very representative of his work:

"Saturn Devouring One of His Sons".

For me, this painting is associated with another one by Goya,

of a dog climbing up on a mound.

The two paintings together

make me think of a third work by Goya.

The one showing a lantern

illuminating a condemned man

standing in front of a firing squad.

Behind them

is the endless line of their ancestors coming from the dark past

and moving towards us,

through the muddy snows of Borodino,

and through the sunny plain of Austerlitz,

between the gases of the Somme bay,

the Ardennes,

the scorching, ravaging heat,

the brilliant and annihilating darkness

of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And the sound of the soldiers

loading their guns...

Shahi!

...in the ears...

Shahi.

A story.

A century.

A man.

The king of his own island

and of his own pen.

Living since Adam's time,

for Adam's descendants.

Depending neither on a people

nor a state.

Not depending on me

or on you.

But his heart beats for a people,

for the history of a people.

Saadi, there is pain in your cry.

It is a fire from which comes smoke.

IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS AN INVISIBLE PAIN

Read Saadi. It is wonderful.

As long as I am here, she will make noise.

All this noise is for me. Wham, bam, splash.

Wham, bam, splash.

Here you go.

You see?

It is what it is.

Come on, get up.

She asserts her existence by making horrible noises.

- I can't help it. - I know that.

I'm washing dishes.

Get up.

"Get up...

and fill our cup with wine,

before the cup is full".

Hi!

On the shore of Lake Geneva, on a beautiful summer day

I passed by and without hesitation

Seeing her charming look, I soon said to her...

Thank you very much.

I don't feel any effect. There's no point.

Take it anyway.

I've been taking it for two weeks.

You're poisoning me with small doses, I know you.

The effect is very gradual.

Stop it, please.

TO BE

AND TO CONTINUE BEING

TO BE AND TO CONTINUE BEING

To be immortal has no interest for you?

What will become of me if I don't die?

Elaine Paige, god help us!

Happiness!

Godard only knows

Golestan intuitively.

Every Friday, before midnight,

he sends a message to this unknown person from the depths of darkness.

If this correspondence turns out to correspond,

the promise of a meeting will be outlined.

If it corresponds.

A MEETING?

You have email.

FRIDAY #4 JLG TO EG "WRITING INVENTION"

That's a reply...

Well,

there's Matisse...

What's that?

This is my handwriting.

It doesn't make sense.

The curves of the Persian alphabet

seem to interest him.

He's just playing.

He's having fun.

What's the other one?

"Finnegans Wake" by Joyce. I never got around to reading it.

I didn't want to read it, because I couldn't.

I read all the exegesis,

all the analyses related to it,

but the book itself, it was impossible.

They fill the cracks in the asphalt?

I'm exhausted.

I'll answer,

but right now I'm too tired.

I'll turn it off. I can do it myself.

A ROAD TO NOWHERE

I still don't see where he's going with this.

I feel like he's trying to put a meaning to it.

That's not the same as finding meaning in it.

- Do you know what I mean? - No, I don't.

He wants me to find a hidden meaning in there.

But the meaning is not there.

He put it there for me to find.

He puts some kind of meaning in it and he wants me to find it.

It's up to me to find out what he meant.

No.

He's not posing the problem.

He asks me a question. Good for him.

But you have to answer.

That's right.

Maybe there's something I'm missing.

But I don't think so.

I think he's playing around.

I don't want to be negative.

Personally, I don't feel anything.

I don't see it as an answer to my letter.

A reply, but not an answer.

It's just playing ping-pong.

But there's no link to it.

No. I don't understand.

What I said was perhaps banal.

Maybe it was trite.

But at least, what I wrote

dealt with the fate of humanity.

Maybe he didn't think about it.

Maybe he thought it was not worth talking about.

Joyce did it 80 years ago.

"Finnegans Wake" is one of his works.

He wrote this text.

But to understand it,

you have to speak German, Latin, Ancient Greek,

Italian, French and English.

Because every word...

I can go and get it for you.

Each word is built from several other words.

When you read it out loud,

the sound association of these words

is supposed to lead

to words from the languages I have just listed.

By proceeding this way,

we discover meaning.

Perhaps he is trying to do the same thing.

What?

Right?

Albrecht Dürer. Melencolia I.

However, melancholy does not lie in the body or soul of the angel,

only in what he has seen and heard.

And Cézanne did not paint mountains

or apples,

but only paintings.

NO HOPE NO MEMORIES

IN THE FORGES OF TIME

When Tolstoy, in War and Peace,

puts the curious innocent peasant boy

into a council of officers in a farmer's hut

and the Russian general picks up the boy

and puts him on the mantelpiece of the hut,

he is putting a witnessing camera.

FRIDAY #5 EG TO JLG WITNESS CAMERA

The innocent soul of Russians to see

how defiance is taking shape,

to observe the moment of the scene,

the burning of Moscow is justified, it is necessary

for the saving of the old mother country.

I can't read. It makes me tired.

It's supposed to be read silently for yourself,

not out loud.

The key is no solution to problems.

Only lock is.

Marlowe wrote: "To be or not.

To be is the answer."

Then the great Will wrote wrongly:

"To be, or not to be, that is the question."

FRIDAY #6 JLG TO EG TO BE OR NOT TO BE

Why describe

in your last g/g5

itinerant ta'ziej-h playing magic,

with words saying that there are no words

to describe all that magical enchantment,

there must be some rotten devil in our current language.

In French, we say: "langage courant", "running language",

and we end by saying/writing: "courant à sa perte",

"running to its loss".

The lovership relation between image and "parole"

can be seen through that short unknown video.

What did he do before he became a filmmaker?

He was a critic at the Cahiers du Cinéma.

Where does he live? In Geneva?

In Rolle,

- Rolle? - near Geneva.

Does he have a wife?

- Yes, he does. - Is she beautiful?

She's an intellectual.

An intellectual?

"How do I live? I live."

This line from "La Bohème" is beautiful.

Who am I?

I am a poet.

How do you live?

I live.

"Who am I?

I am a poet

What do I do? I write

And how do I live? I live."

THE POET RESISTS TROUBLED TIMES

"In my happy poverty

I squander like a prince

my poems and songs of love

in hopes and dreams

and castles in air,

I'm a millionaire in spirit."

One is never ...

"One is never sad enough."

That's from

Elias Canetti.

"One is never sad enough

for the world to become better."

"For the world to become better,

one is never sad enough."

Elias Canetti.

Mitra?

- Hello, Mr Golestan. - Are you all right?

No. Did you hear the news?

I have heard what happened in France.

But worse things are happening elsewhere.

"Any man's death diminishes me."

"Any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls,

it tolls for thee."

It is a poem by John Donne,

a priest of St. Paul, in England

in the 17th century.

It refers to Saadi's sublime poem:

"Human beings are members of a whole

In creation of one essence and soul,

If one member is afflicted with pain

Other members uneasy will remain."

This is the greatest lesson in humanity.

This Saadi is amazing.

- Turn on the light. - It's OK like that!

- That's not good at all. - Which one? This one?

"When the majority of the herd goes in one direction,

conformism stipulates that the element that has remained immobile,

or that has taken a different path, be isolated,

be singled out, seen as opposed to the others."

What are you looking for?

I am reading your notes.

Well, what about it?

I'm looking for a word, your word.

"In search of lost words".

"According to you, we have to stop feeling superior

and admit that one is just a worm in the same mud."

"Yes, we are in the same mud.

Whether we admit it or not,

this stench that permeates us

is proof of that."

"But I do not recognise

nor the mud as a habitat,

nor myself as a worm that wriggles in it."

I'm going to lie down.

Come back in 15 minutes.

- Should I turn off the light? - No, don't.

ON THE CONTRARY

"Fire up the steam bath

for me,

I've forgotten what it's like

to see the light of day.

The steam is suffocating,

and maddening,

Hot steam

unties my tongue in frays.

Fire up, fire up, fire up..."

"One is never sad enough

for the world to become better."

"'It may be', Nora said,

'but it's all pretty unsatisfactory."

What I wrote is long.

It's indisputable.

Given what he wrote,

I'm not going

to put myself through the same complexity.

I have to speak so as to clarify what he's saying.

What do you think?

I have it in front of me, it's impossible to understand.

I guess that's what he wanted.

He's quite pretentious.

He's also shaped

by the Christian education he received in his youth.

Everything he says comes from that.

The problem is not him,

but how we chose to communicate.

OUR FAREWELL BEFORE DANGER WILL ALWAYS BE HECTOR'S TO ANDROMACHE

I've read it ten times.

I see what he means, but I don't understand it.

His sentence is not...

If I wrote such a sentence... I wouldn't be able to do it!

That's not my language.

My writing can be dense or cryptic,

but I don't write like that.

NULL-A THREE

Make it simple.

How do I answer?

I don't know.

You're going to look

in the post-war period

what will follow...

You want to explain

what happens

after the Revolution...

Not at all.

This is not a discussion about ideas, it's history,

as if we were specifying the date of death of a king

or the date of the French Revolution.

Nothing to do with analysing the causes of the Revolution

or the reasons for its downfall.

- Say it in a few words. - It's not that.

I know your examples.

Get on with it.

Why did you ask me to come upstairs?

Certainly not to learn from your spiritual lights.

What's wrong with that?

You have an opinion about everything!

That's it, so far so good.

I read it again up to the red line.

I numbered the pages.

If you want to read, follow the pagination.

Today, Friday, 5 pages of answers

on the theme of language.

But a language will never be the language.

WILL THEY EVER CORRESPOND?

Don't go away.

I haven't moved.

Tell me something nice.

Sure. What do you want to hear?

Lie to me.

Tell me all these years you've been waiting for me.

All these years I have waited.

Tell me you would have died if I hadn't come back.

I would have died if you hadn't come back.

Tell me you still love me like I love you.

I...

Tell lies.

The spirit

borrows perceptions

from matter.

Perceptions... What are they?

The mind borrows perceptions from matter

from which it feeds.

And...

it gives it back as movements

to which it has given its freedom.

Today,

yesterday,

the dawn of time...

The story was lost,

the mould evaporated.

The skull, the case of thought, is no more.

A hand holds a bowl of wheat, but the wheat is no more.

A uterus is dying from waiting.

The nobles were buried and the fields hid the grave.

Iranian Cinematheque, good morning.

Ms Taheri, I'm Golestan.

I'm sorry to have kept you waiting.

You've been so kind!

It's not kindness, it's my job.

I'm happy to help you with this bad copy.

This is the extract that you sent me.

Do you want a 35 mm copy of this clip?

Yes, I do.

I have only one solution

since I don't have a negative.

Of course.

I have only one positive.

I have to make an interpositive of this extract.

So many trunks were ringed with rings,

So many men died, so many women gave birth.

The fruits of the earth went back to the earth.

The earth is a sleeping beauty,

with its secrets, its roots, its dreams.

A pulse...

A dream...

A vision.

In the soft, and wet darkness of the cold earth,

a living dream stood beside the dreamer

who was dead.

Thank you so much.

Hi. How are you?

The doctor said five days. So I don't know.

FRIDAY #13 EG TO JLG

Thanks for the call.

A FRIDAY

NOT AS GOOD AS THE OTHERS MOLTO ADAGIO - ANDANTE

The words that you're using

are formed by the ideas that you have...

Listen to this piece,

Beethoven composed it two years before his death.

Suffering from cirrhosis,

he was forbidden to drink wine

and to eat liver pâté, his favourite dish.

After surviving this fatal disease,

he composed, in Baden,

the "Holy Song of Thanksgiving of a Convalescent to the Deity".

We don't have to send it tonight.

Just one line.

You forgot Catholicism.

Last night, he haemorrhaged again.

He was taken by ambulance to the hospital.

We went home and went to bed very late.

We've seen better days.

Mum, today is Friday.

Tomorrow is the weekend.

We have to wait until Monday.

FRIDAY #14 JLG TO EG

BLOOD CALLS BLOOD

The words go by, the fear in the army...

And the great battle begins,

that of art, of people and blood.

Feverishly yours. JLG.

Even today, the Christian Church

makes people eat the host

as a substitute for the flesh of Jesus

and drink the wine as his blood.

This double sacrilege

of cannibalism and vampirism

aims at absorbing the divine body of the son of God

and thus to appropriate it.

These are the kind of beliefs involved,

vestiges of customs of killing human beings,

followed by the consumption of their flesh

as a divine sacrifice.

"We must invent a world

and reinvent Man."

Ashi!

Shahi!

Ashi!

Yes?

What's going on?

Ashi...

Ashi...

Mum!

Shahi's not doing too bad.

My God... Crap...

FRIDAY #18 JLG TO EG

Why doesn't it...

"It may be," Nora said,

"but it's all pretty unsatisfactory."

"It may be," Nora said, "but it's all pretty.

And, you weren't satisfactory."

"But it's all pretty unsatisfactory."

And what's the next one?

When you were in hospital,

I chose this passage from your collection.

I didn't see any of that or else,

I really wasn't well.

It was a Friday at the hospital.

Ah.

- Shall I read? - Yes, please.

"The Renaissance was about that.

That was what the Renaissance was all about.

That was the Renaissance.

Being a man.

Essere umano.

Let's go back 200 years before the Renaissance

when Saadi said:

'The body of man is noble as is his soul.'"

No.

How should I read? Tell me.

"The nobility of the body of man comes from the human soul."

"The nobility of the body of man comes from the human soul."

The human soul!

The human soul!

The human soul!

FRIDAY #15 EG TO JLG ADAGIO CON SPIRITO

"The nobility of the body of man comes from the human soul."

"From the human soul."

I have faith in humankind.

Over a generation,

the whole of humanity cannot be changed,

but in every generation,

something moves it forward

towards the ideal humanity.

You have to be patient.

Man has always found goodness in the midst of desolation.

In the midst of desolation, man finds good.

I can turn this sentence in all directions,

its unchanging meaning will not alter.

I have faith in humankind.

In the...

In the "I think,

therefore I am",

the "I"

of "I am",

is no longer...

It is not the same as the "I" in "I think".

Why?

Why?

All his films are like that.

That's the way he thinks.

He connects elements,

he does not weave them.

It's a sequence, like

in Hemingway's "In Our Time".

Very short texts of a few lines,

placed one after the other,

like a casual conversation.

Snippets follow each other

in a frame of thought.

It is thanks to this framework that coherence is created.

Everything emanates from the same man

and reflects his temperament,

of an idea...

He is playful...

"Savamment".

Knowingly.

Sagely.

He is playful.

Wisely.

One day when he was playing his Piano Concerto Number 3,

Beethoven asked Ignaz von Seyfried

to turn the pages of his score.

But, in doing so,

Seyfried saw nothing but blank pages.

On two pages, at most,

some sort of hieroglyphics were scribbled.

When the pages were to be turned,

Beethoven would give Seyfried mischievous looks,

amused by his distress.

FRIDAY #20 JLG TO EG HAPPY NEW YEAR

THE WALL OF WORDS SHE IS BUSY PROBING

PROTECTS FROM HER UNSHELTERED AUTHORITY.

W. BENJAMIN.

For the new year, he sends me his best wishes.

- Adam's Death? - No.

That's good for wishes,

a little gift.

FRIDAY #21 EG TO JLG HAPPY NEW YEAR

Very nice. This one makes me cry.

The man taking off his shirt, just that.

The first time I saw it, it drove me crazy.

And it still does.

The Baptism of Christ, by Piero.

This 'della Francesca' is like no other.

The world, the tree, the water, the sky, the landscape,

standing in ecstasy and harmony,

silent witnesses watching for the moment when the holy water

will fall from the cup of St. John the Baptist

on the head of Jesus.

And meanwhile, the world goes about its business.

Ignoring this sacred moment,

a man undresses.

Does he embody humanity preparing for baptism

or does he embody humanity

indifferent to the baptism of another

under the eye of the Holy Spirit?

Happy New Year.

Have you read that short story by Hemingway,

"Today is Friday"?

One Friday, two Roman soldiers

are playing jacks.

A guy is being hanged

or rather crucified.

An event that has stood out in the history of mankind

is presented here, simply,

by the evocations

of two playing soldiers.

THE RETURN OF FRIDAY

BECOMES AN IMAGE TO HIS IMAGE

A FORM

THAT THINKS

WALKING

DREAM FACTORY

ALONG

PARADISE

All of them...

The man... The work.

Profiled on the front.

The lush green

Became what it is

Of summer

And the blaze

Became the work

Royal

Of autumn

And the ruin of winter

Before spring...

He is the work.

... would bloom

again

His life now

Darkened

By time

He no longer his anarchist side, it seems.

He's always going against the grain.

On the contrary...

And concerned with history, always.

He lives alone?

Alone.

Are you alone?

Yes, I am alone.

Are you alone?

A HISTORY OF SOLITUDE

Yes, I'm alone.

OR SOLITUDE OF HISTORY

This worrier of time

doesn't give to us or to himself

the possibility of waiting, for history to judge.

For history to judge...

Dear old friend Robinson,

I hope that you are in better shape than Friday

who is going next Monday to some surgery in the back,

the fifth column.

But all the best anyway for every one.

Even if Nora said,

at the end of "The Thin Man" by I.D Hammett:

"It may be, Nora said,

but it's all pretty unsatisfactory."

He's lost his hair, poor fellow.

What's that face?

It's in Rolle, where he lives.

Let's see.

...put things straight.

For the progressives who...

WE CAN TEACH WHAT WE DON'T KNOW

This is his dog, Roxxi.

Oh my God!

Just send him pictures of me too,

you have some.

Okay.

He's nuts, that's for sure.

Okay.

Which photo should I send him?

Which photo should I send him?

A picture where I'm sick, like him.

I have a very funny one.

Funny? It looks like I'm dead.

Wait, I'll write him.

If I want to...

FRIDAY #25 EG TO JLG A MISTER IN DISTRESS

Dear Robinson of the neighbouring island,

have a look at this photo,

see how low one can fall.

But then, the catheter was removed

and by and by, with the passing of a few days,

it came the time for correctly watering the world

with the purest of pees.

Hope the same happens to you very soon

when the same road,

maritime,

is travelled or rather sailed by you.

Then we could possibly celebrate with some Dom Perignon,

somewhere nicer than in a hospital room.

FRIDAY #28 JLG TO EG A LONG GOODBYE

The long goodbye.

Who is it? It's not him?

Is that his shadow?

Does he have a cane?

Wenn man nicht sagen

kann, dann muss man schweigen.

Wenn man nicht sagen kann,

dann muss man schweigen.

"If you don't want to say it,

it's better to keep quiet."

Do forgive the delay,

due to several seminars in the hospital.

He made a spelling mistake.

Things don't give signs.

"Never more", wrote our dear poet.

Poe/t.

He quotes Edgar Allen Poe, "The Raven".

And infinite columns of words defeated are crawling

through internet landscape

like flies on a lost pizza.

That's very interesting!

"It may be," Nora said, but it's all pretty

U.N. satisfactory."

Fridays come and Sundays go...

Shahi!

Shahi!

Shadows have grown long.

The evening sun is going down.

And I know some people are planning

a trip to Mars.

It will take some four years to reach,

and no possibility to return.

They would not take us.

What should we do, while staying here?

Once again, we went to see the fireworks.

It rained and the powder got wet.

Why "again"?

FRIDAY #30 JLG TO EG FW: UNKNOWN FILM

Once upon a time, an old New Wave animal

sent the following mail to another one.

There was no answer, for the other animal,

even in love for the first one,

the other one was human.

My loneliness recognises yours.

In the big garden, far from ours.

Here is the wind of coldness and rain.

The footsteps in the leaves shatter the hearing.

In a month, in a year, will we suffer

that so many seas keep me from you?

There is...

there's a lot of sadness.

The plots against the demigoddess.

There is a lot of sadness,

the plots against the demigoddess.

There is a lot of sadness,

the plots against the demigoddess.

In 1802,

Beethoven wrote in the "Heiligenstadt Testament"

that only necessity

can compel him to join in with the others.

A NO CORRESPONDENCE

OR

CORRESPONDENCES

Usually, it starts like this,

there's death coming.

And then you start to mourn.

I don't know exactly why,

but I did the opposite.

I mourned first.

But death did not come.

Not in the streets of Paris, nor on the shore of Lake Geneva.

So I remember,

my dear Golestan, that you were not happy

that I used the word redemption.

That's not from me, that's from Mauthner.

And I also remember a sentence from Bazin

which, I think, said:

"Perspective

has been the sin of Western painting.

And Niepce and Lumière, that is, the cinema,

were its redeemers."

So, this is what...

But that's all language.

It's the voice that speaks the language.

It has nothing to do with language

which is a kind of

image/speech combination.

So, why self death?

It's...

wisely desperate and voluntary death.

Language should...

manage to...

Maybe we're getting there right now a little bit.

Getting to commit suicide.

That is to say getting to say anything.

Yes.

PARALLELS ADJ. LINES THAT DON'T MEET,

THAT NEVER TOUCH, AS MUCH AS WE EXTEND THEM

IN BOTH WAYS.

It looks pretty evident

that Euclid's famous axiom

about the two parallels

was not very accurate.

FRIDAY #30A JLG TO EG SPECIAL

It's me, poor me!

He was in bed too.

He is in the hospital, yes?

It looks pretty evident

that Euclid's famous axiom about two parallels

was not very accurate.

All the best, honourable Friday.

My g/g 23 will fly

as usual next week.

Be patient, Jean-Luc Godard.

You will certainly

crawl out on to the wild shores of the deserted island.

Most certainly.

It has taken me six months so far, here

to do just that.

There is better climate in the Alps?

Sent: Tue, 10 February,

2015 at 2:09 p.m.

Subject: g/g 24,

late due to hospital.

Surrounded by Macbeth sorcery girls.

This is the influence

of the illness and hospitalisation.

The witches of Macbeth

surround him.

He is afraid to die. But he shouldn't be.

He really shouldn't be.

"The weird sisters,

hand in hand,

posters of the sea and the land,

thus do go about, about,

thrice to thine

and thrice to mine

and thrice again, to make up nine."

"Peace!

The charm's wound up."

Ah, fear.

Fear...

Yes, fear.

In a way, you see,

fear is still the daughter of God.

Redeemed on Good Friday night.

Oh, she's not a pretty sight.

Sometimes mocked, sometimes cursed.

And yet, don't be fooled.

She is at the bedside of every agony.

She intercedes for men.

DASHIELL HAMMETT RED HARVEST

And Mimi...

What do you think will happen to Mimi?

And Dorothy and Gilbert?

Nothing new.

They'll go on and be Mimi and Dorothy and Gilbert.

Just as you and I will go on being us.

And the Quinns will go on being the Quinns.

A murder does not...

A murder does not endanger anybody's life.

Except the murdered's,

and sometimes the murderer's.

"That may be," Nora said,

"that may be, but it's all pretty unsatisfactory."

"It's pretty unsatisfactory."

"Pretty unsatisfactory."

Obviously.

What will happen to Mimi, Gilbert and Dorothy?

Nothing.

They'll go on and be Mimi, Gilbert and Dorothy.

Just as you and I will go on being us.

And the Quinns will go on being the Quinns.

A murder does not endanger anybody's life.

Except the murdered's,

and sometimes the murderer's.

That may be, Nora said,

but it's all pretty unsatisfactory.

Unfindable,

but the end is better in English.

I repeat, sir.

That may be, Nora said,

Everyone expressed themselves as best they could.

But it's all pretty unsatisfactory.

Speak without fear.

Beethoven never composed a requiem.

But he said that if he were to do so,

Cherubini's would be his only model.

Thus, at the request of Beethoven himself,

Luigi Cherubini's requiem

was played at his funeral.

Oh, cheers!

Happy birthday!

- How are you? - Beautiful beard!

Hello!

99 or 100?

- How old are you? - Something like that.

100 or 99?

It's the beginning of my hundred.

Is it today or tomorrow?

99!

I am 99 years old.

I am starting my 100th year.

AND THEN THE LAST FRIDAY

GOOD FRIDAY AWAY FROM ROBINSON

Shortly after Beethoven composed "The Funeral March",

Heinrich Heine wrote the following poem:

"Do you hear the bell?

Kneel down.

We carry the sacraments

to a dying God."

"Do you hear the bell?

Kneel down.

We carry the sacraments to a dying God."

He went back to the hospital.

It's his heart.

We've been cut.

I think he's very ill.

According to Jean-Paul, his assistant...

It's to be expected, Mitra.

You don't have to come into the world.

But once there, you have to leave.

He had a good life.

He lived more than 80 years. How old is he? 85?

It's quite beautiful...

When he leaves, a certain beauty will disappear.

That's what hurts the most.

All the beautiful people are leaving.

There are many beautiful people,

who do beautiful things, and that you don't know.

They represent a form of beauty,

but they took a different path.

They became revolutionaries or terrorists.

This is all part

of the beauty of life.

With him will disappear the source of a certain beauty.

But beauty does not disappear,

it circulates.

What if you had known Mozart who died at 36?

And Schubert, who died at 33, how would you have reacted?

I feel like we'd lose a protector.

TO SHOW

Yes, I understand.

If you sit by a river

and watch its movement,

you cannot choose a drop and want to follow its course,

to the earth,

the sewer or the sea.

He is dying, he will die.

Even Jesus,

who is said to have risen,

where did he go?

All these years I've been waiting.

Tell me you would have died if I hadn't come back.

I would have died if you had not come back.

Tell me that you still love me like I love you.

ROADS TO NOWHERE

PATHS THAT LEAD TO NOWHERE

And even if nothing were to be as we had hoped,

it would not change anything about our hopes.

Hopes would blaze up later, many times,

Suffocating from the enemy, he'd keep waking up.

And the realm of hope would be wider than in our time.

It would extend to all the continents.

The need for contradiction and for resistance would never diminish.

Just as the past was unchangeable,

hopes would remain unchangeable.

And those who, one day, when we were young,

had nourished the ardent hope...

We will bring him back to life.

A DAY LIKE A FRIDAY

Does Godard still believe

in cinema today,

with all the films he has made?

He believes in the word and the image, that's for sure.

Why would it be different?

I want to say something else.

He's a man who has thought.

He has, with others,

introduced thought to the cinema.

He said, "This is what is."

Does he believe he can help people

through the cinema as he did?

That's why I ask:

Does Godard still believe in cinema?

Listen, I don't know.

It's sentences, it's...

It's kind of like sentences.

You say that, I don't know...

Do you believe in in literature?

I think I do since you're asking me this question.

Cinema doesn't ask any...

It doesn't ask questions.

So it doesn't give answers.

That's it. I don't think so, these are questions...

I'm not saying this for you, Ebrahim,

but these are police-like questions.

Is it...

We can't. We can't, we can't.

If I say I believe in it, you'll ask me why.

And why...

The child never asks why.

He searches, he looks, he touches.

Parents teach him to say why.

And why do parents do this?

The child doesn't know.

OK, let's go.

WITH FUNDING FROM MOHAMMAD LADJEVARDIAN AND LEILA VARASTEH

Well, don't you think they look alike?

THANK YOU, TO THE ONE WHO OPENED THE DOORS OF ROLLE

- Yes. - Yes?

- But this one is... - Yes?

There's a bit of Giacometti in there.

Yes, yes.

This one.

Did you watch the film or not?

Yes, I did.

But this one...

The salafist looks like

the young boy from Elephant.

The American university...

Yes, yes, that's true.

When you set them up correctly like that...

Right!

There.