Poetic Αrt is a treatise by Nicolas Bouillot published in 1674. By extension, these terms identify a literary and generally artistic form: a work that deals with the principles of its own creation. All of Jean-Luc Godard’s work has this reflective form. But, unlike Bouillot, his aim is, on the one hand, to make the work refer to the conditions of its possibility –production, ideology, the materiality of tools, human relations, historical contexts– and, on the other, to show how and why the project is not possible – the inadequacies of the material and business means that constitute it, the violent failure of its relationship with collective history, the questions that give birth to it. It suffices to think of Contempt (1963), where everything prevents the realization of a film, leaving room for the infinity of nature’s sublime. Among the many forms of poetic art invented by Jean-Luc Godard, the draft is the one that leads the others to their ultimate necessity. With the Scénario de “Sauve qui peut la vie” (1979) and Petites notes à propos du film “Je vous salue, Marie” (1983), Godard invokes the existence of a visual script. Letter to Freddy Buache (1982) explains why film cannot be made. The Darty Report (1989) explores the status of the cinema: it combines, superimposes and conflates the project, the rejection, the realisation, the evaluation, the evidence of the production and the dissolution of the finished product. Amateur Report (exhibition model) ( 2005) fully responds to the polysemy of the term draft: it is part of the preparatory research, offers a film design that serves as a starting point for a project, and provides a general overview of the final work. Exposé du film annonce du film “Scénario” and Scénarios, the two posthumous works completed in 2024 by Fabrice Aragno and Jean-Paul Battaggia, are the culmination of seven decades of materialist musings on the making of art. As for Paul Grivas’ filmic essays, which revisit material from the filming of Our Music and Film Socialisme, they lovingly extend the constructivist energy of their inexhaustible sources.

Nicole Brenez and Paul Grivas