He was the first one of their Nouvelle Vague to have seen us, to have recognized our plight and stood by our cause. No one in the West saw Palestine as he had: a mirror of the world’s cruelty and injustice. He emancipated the language of cinema, unveiling unsuspected horizons of possibility, for poetry, for humanity. In these gestures of emancipation Palestine was always a motif.
The board and members of the Palestine Film Institute mourn the inconsolable loss of Jean-Luc Godard. A master, a guiding light, the poet at the frontlines. He has taught us the fearless drive to speak truth to power and the courage to face authority with irreverence. He has left us with cinematic gems in which the struggle for a free and democratic Palestine holds the world’s conscience to its barest test.
Cinema is the bond between art and justice, and we owe Jean-Luc Godard a safe and dignified home in his cinema. As he stood beside us in life, so shall we steward his images now that he is gone, with care, with dignity, and in solidarity.
