Fondazione Prada in Milan to Rename Its Cinema After Jean-Luc Godard
CINEMA GODARD: Fondazione Prada is to pay permanent tribute to French New Wave pioneer Jean-Luc Godard. Starting from September, the movie theater housed in the cultural institution’s Milan location will be renamed Cinema Godard in honor of the late Franco-Swiss director, who died last year at age 91 and whose work has influenced generations of cinephiles, artists and spectators.
“Cinema is a laboratory for new ideas and a space of cultural education — for this reason, we have decided to name our movie theater after Jean-Luc Godard,” said Miuccia Prada in a statement Thursday. “His works’ experimental and visionary power is a constant inspiration to renew our foundation’s commitment to spread cinematographic and visual languages and explore emerging narrative forms by activating a place where people can understand the world and their lives.”
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Fondazione Prada is the only international institution to host two permanent projects by Godard. Both were specifically conceived for the Milan venue and personally supervised by the filmmaker during their installation in 2019.
For “Le Studio d’Orphée,” Godard relocated his atelier and recording and editing studio to Fondazione Prada, setting a living and working space bringing together the original technical equipment used for his last films from 2010 to 2019, as well as furniture, books, paintings and other personal items from his studio-home in Rolle, Switzerland. Here, visitors have the opportunity of attending the screening of his 2018 feature film “Le Livre d’image” in the physical place where it was created.
For the elevator of Fondazione Prada’s Torre tower, Godard also conceived “Accent-soeur,” an audio installation combining the soundtrack of “Histoire(s) du cinema,” an eight-part video project the director began in 1988 and completed in 1998 that narrates the complex history of “the seventh art.”
The institution also implemented a retrospective program devoted to Godard’s work, examining his vast filmography that includes titles such as “Breathless,” “A Woman Is a Woman,” “Band of Outsiders,” “Pierrot le Fou” and “Masculin Féminin.” Incidentally, fashion house Saint Laurent also recently produced a short film exalting Godard’s last work and premiered it at the 76th annual Cannes Film Festival in May.
Over the years, Fondazione Prada has supported several film-related activities creating connections between moving images, the visual arts and technology. To kick off its new film season in September, it will invite German film director, screenwriter and author Werner Herzog and French film director and screenwriter Rebecca Zlotowski to participate in two of the meetings open to the public.
In particular, on Sept. 16 Zlotowski will discuss her work, ranging from her debut film “Belle Épine,” which revealed the talent of Léa Seydoux, to the more recent “Les enfants des autres,” which was presented at the Venice Film Festival last year.
The following day, Herzog will present his latest film “The Fire Within: a Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft,” dedicated to the French volcanologists and filmmakers, and “Theater of Thought,” exploring the mystery of the human brain between neuroscientific and technological discoveries and their ethical and philosophical implications. In addition to Herzog’s two unreleased films, a selection of his documentary works from the 2000s onward will be screened, many of which were never released theatrically in Italy.
Cinema Godard’s schedule will continue to include themed screenings, retrospectives, previews and restored movies. Each monthly program will be organized in different strands, ranging from exploring contemporary filmmakers, young film talents and spotlighting queer cinema to presenting restored versions of movies that had an enduring influence on collective imagination.
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