Godard Tapes On The Shelf
2009
The piece Godard Tapes On the Shelf is an 8 mm film comprised of three sequences, each focusing on a different female character: Edith, Laure and Noriko. Each protagonist is seen in a state, almost a fit, of vigorously vibrant happiness. In each sequence a young male voice is narrating a short story in French about his-hers relationships, raising issues of memory, life in the city and the chagrins of love. Drawing from "new wave cinema", the work challenges conventions of traditional cinema, both commercial narrative cinema norms and film criticism's vocabulary, using techniques such as high-speed projection, jump cuts, character asides and breaking the eyeline match rule in continuity editing. The stories are very simple yet unfocused and constantly digressing from the main story line. Focusing on representation of human conflict from a humanist, existentialist perspective, Berlowitz's approach is more interested in redefining film structure and style than actually giving a comprehensive answer or being understood. The work renders an essentially feminist materialization of the inner most soul, proving high commitment to reality and the world in which it exists.