Description: In this book, Jonathan Scott Lee argues that Jean-Luc Godard is best seen as a philosopher who uses cinema and video as his media to develop provocative interventions into contemporary political situations and dilemmas, both explicitly and aesthetically.
Brief description: Jonathan Scott Lee is Professor of Philosophy at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, USA, where he has taught for more than thirty years. While working extensively in ancient Greek philosophy and contemporary French philosophy, he has also written and published widely on contemporary music and sound art, cinema, visual art, and poetry.
Review Quotes:
"The words "philosopher" and "insurgent" precisely capture the profoundly intelligent, endlessly ornery cinema of Jean-Luc Godard, and Jonathan Scott Lee's richly interdisciplinary study explores the full range of his achievements as a filmmaker, video artist, and sociocultural thinker. Film scholars and philosophers will find it as rewarding as one of JLG's own best works." --David Sterritt, Adjunct Professor of Film, Maryland Institute College of Art, USA, and Author of The Films of Jean-Luc Godard: Seeing the Invisible (1999)
"This is a lucidly written and engagingly argued study of Jean-Luc Godard's film career that succeeds in offering a number of fresh and original insights on the work of this widely studied director. Lee's book examines the unique experience of watching films by Godard, showing how the process of thinking in, through and with images is encouraged by the filmmaker. It is refreshing to read a book that applies philosophy to film texts and that does so without recourse to jargon, approaching these questions seriously and methodically while remaining readable throughout." --Douglas Morrey, Professor of French Studies, University of Warwick, UK