[Commlist] New book: Jean-Luc Godard's Unmade and Abandoned Projects

Michael Witt is pleased to announce the publication of the book JEAN-LUC 
GODARD’S UNMADE AND ABANDONED PROJECTS:

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/jeanluc-godards-unmade-and-abandoned-projects-9781350494596/ 


In this book Michael Witt adopts a ‘negative’ approach to film and media 
history, examining what wasn’t possible, what didn’t happen, what failed 
to materialise, and why. It offers an evidence-based investigation of 
Jean-Luc Godard’s vast and varied ‘non-corpus’ of unrealised and 
unfinished projects from the late 1940s to the 2020s that for various 
reasons failed to see the light of day. These range from films, videos 
and television programmes to books, a literary translation, plays, 
exhibitions, CDs and CD-ROMs, a camera, a film journal and even an 
architectural maquette.

Michael Witt examines these multifarious projects in six perspectives, 
which provide the book’s chapter titles: literature, cinema, theatre, 
television, politics and history. Detailed case studies include Godard’s 
early unfilmed scripts, L’ÉCRIVAIN (‘The writer’, 1961-64), abandoned 
versions of the project that became MASCULIN FÉMININ (1964-65), unmade 
adaptations of books by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz, projects on the 
Holocaust in the 1960s, Jean Giraudoux’s POUR LUCRÈCE (DUEL OF ANGELS, 
1962-68), ONE AMERICAN MOVIE (1968), a collaborative television 
experiment in Quebec (1968), UN FILM FRANÇAIS ( ‘A French film’, Dziga 
Vertov group, 1968–71), the book À BAS LE CINÉMA (DÉBUT D’UNE LUTTE 
PROLONGÉE) (‘Down with cinema (start of a prolonged struggle)’, Dziga 
Vertov group, 1969), /JUSQU’À LA VICTOIRE : LES MÉTHODES DE PENSÉE ET DE 
TRAVAIL DE LA RÉVOLUTION PALESTINIENNE /(‘Until victory: the methods of 
thinking and working of the Palestinian revolution’, Dziga Vertov group, 
1969-74), the experimental video MOI JE (‘Me I’, 1973), attempts to 
develop a new lightweight 35mm camera (the 8-35) with Jean-Pierre 
Beauviala (1977-83), NAISSANCE (DE L’IMAGE) D’UNE NATION (‘Birth (of the 
image) of a nation’) in Mozambique (1977-80), projects with Francis Ford 
Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios (1978-81), abandoned approaches to KING LEAR 
(1982-86), PAS UN DÎNER DE GALA/UN FAMEUX DÉBAT (‘Not a gala dinner’/‘A 
famous debate’) with Claude Lanzmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy (1999), the 
COLLAGE(S) DE FRANCE exhibition and its many unmade variations (2001-6), 
collaborative ventures with Marcel Ophuls (2002-10), plans to adapt 
Racine’s BÉRÉNICE in the 1960s, 1990s and 2010s, and more. The book also 
contains a full annotated list of Godard’s hundreds of unmade and 
abandoned ventures as an appendix.

The research for this book, which was made possible by a Leverhulme 
Trust Research Fellowship, involved work in archives and private 
collections in various countries over several years.

It is a substantial book (262,000 words), which is currently available 
as a hardback and e-book. It’s also very expensive and will be beyond 
the means of most individual book buyers, although a more affordable 
paperback is forthcoming at a later date.

*Endorsements*
‘A dazzling array of Godardian might-have-beens from the most meticulous 
and thoughtful of Godard scholars.’

  *
    Jonathan Rosenbaum, Film Critic

‘An astounding scholarly achievement. The depth and rigour of Witt’s 
primary research is breathtaking. Once again, Witt completely 
reconfigures the Godardian corpus, while making a significant 
contribution to media archaeology and to the study of ‘orphaned’, lost 
or forgotten cultural objects.’

  *
    Michael Temple, Emeritus Professor, Birkbeck College, London

‘Michael Witt has set a high bar for what it means to analyze a 
film/media director’s body of work, and to locate its heteroclite traces 
in order to do so. He has accomplished the Herculean task of covering 
ALL of Godard’s work of this kind, giving it order, showing us its 
logic, understanding the zigzag ways of Godard’s thinking through ideas, 
sometimes for decades. This is a book to come back to, and to treasure 
as an absolutely reliable resource.’

  *
    Janet Bergstrom, Research Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, UCLA

*Film Season*
To coincide with the publication of the book, Michael Witt is curating a 
film season at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London 
(November 2025 – June 2026):
https://ica.art/films/jean-luc-godard-unmade-and-abandoned 
<https://ica.art/films/jean-luc-godard-unmade-and-abandoned>

This season begins on Tuesday 25 November at 6.30pm with a special 35mm 
screening, which to the best of my knowledge has never been done before: 
the creation of what Godard proposed in 1967 as his 'adaptation' of 
William Faulkner's novel THE WILD PALMS, which involves showing his two 
films MADE IN USA and TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER (2 OU 3 
CHOSES QUE JE SAIS D'ELLE) as a single integrated work, their narratives 
intertwined (a reel from MADE IN USA followed by a reel from TWO OR 
THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER, then a reel from MADE IN USA, and so on).
The season continues on Tuesday 9 December with a session devoted to 
Godard's approach to literary adaptation through reference to his 
relationship with Guy de Maupassant. This includes screenings of THE 
CRIMSON CURTAIN (LE RIDEAU CRAMOISI, Alexandre Astruc, 1953), ONE LIFE 
(UNE VIE, Alexandre Astruc, 1958), A FLIRTATIOUS WOMAN (BASED ON 
MAUPASSANT) (UNE FEMME COQUETTE (D'APRÈS MAUPASSANT), Jean-Luc Godard, 
1956), and MASCULINE FEMININE: IN 15 ACTS (MASCULIN FÉMININ: QUINZE 
FAITS PRÉCIS, Jean-Luc Godard, 1966).
Only these two opening sessions are up on the ICA website so far. The 
season will continue in the spring with a further 11 sessions, each of 
which sets a selection of Godard’s completed films from the 1950s to the 
2000s in dialogue with others by him and a range of different directors 
as a means of thinking about a specific Godardian unrealised work, or 
category of unfinished project, and its relationship with his completed 
output. These screenings, details of which will be available on the ICA 
website in due course, will be devoted to the themes of 'Theatre', 
'American Revolution', 'Palestine', 'The Remake', 'The Audiovisual 
Script', 'Shakespeare', 'Literary Adaptation II: Charles-Ferdinand 
Ramuz', 'History', 'Exhibiting Cinema', 'Animals', and 'Films not Made 
by Jean-Luc Godard'.

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