NOTRE MUSIQUEA film by

Jean-Luc Godard

A Wellspring Release

World Premiere, 2004 Cannes Film FestivalOfficial Selection, 2004 Toronto Film Festival

Official Selection, 2004 New York Film FestivalOfficial Selection, Chicago International Film Festival

WINNER – BEST FILM OF THE YEAR – FIPRESCI INTERNATIONAL FILMCRITICS

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NOTRE MUSIQUE“Our Music”

The Filmmakers

Writer/Director JEAN-LUC GODARDProducers ALAIN SARDE

RUTH WALDBURGERDirector of Photography JULIEN HIRSCH

Art Director ANNE-MARIE MIÉVILLESound PIERRE ANDRÉ

GABRIEL HAFNERFRANÇOIS MUSY

Memory ELIAS SANBARCasting RICHARD ROUSSEAU

Production Manager JEAN-PAUL BATTAGIAZYBA GALIJASEVIC

Second Unit Director AURÉLIEN POITRIMOULTAssistant Camera JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BEAUVALLET

Music Extracts from JEAN SIBELIUSALEXANDER KNAIFELHANS OTTEKETIL BJORNSTADMEREDITH MONKKOMITASGYORGY KURTAGVALENTIN SILVSTROVPETER TCHAIKOVSKYTRYGVE SEIMARVO PÄRTANOUAR BRAHEMDAVID DARLING

Texts ANTONIA BIRNBAUMWOLFGANG SOFSKYFYODOR DOSTOEVSKYMAURICE BLANCHOT

79 minutesIn French, English and Spanish with subtitles

Dolby SRD

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NOTRE MUSIQUE“Our Music”

The Cast

Judith Lerner SARAH ADLEROlga Brodsky NADE DIEURamos Garcia RONY KRAMER

Ambassador SIMON EINEC. Maillard JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOUVET

Indians GEORGE AGUILARLETICIA GUTIÉRREZ

Spanish Translator LANA SCHULMANN

withFERLYN BRASSELMA DZANICLANA BARIC

as themselvesJEAN-LUC GODARD

MAHMOUD DARWISHJUAN GOYTISOLO

JEAN-PAUL CURNIERPIERRE BERGOUNIOUX

GILLES PEQUEUX

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NOTRE MUSIQUE“Our Music”

Shot and Reverse ShotImaginary: CertaintyReality: Uncertainty

The Principle of Cinema:Go Towards the Light and Shine it on Our Night

Our Music

Part poetry, part journalism, part philosophy, Jean-Luc Godard’s “Notre Musique” is a timelessmeditation on war as seen through the prisms of cinema, text and image.

Largely set at a literary conference in Sarajevo, the film draws on the conflagration of theBosnian war, but also draws on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the brutal treatment of NativeAmericans, and the legacy of the Nazis.

“Notre Musique” is structured into three Dantean Kingdoms: “Hell,” “Purgatory” and “Heaven.”

In the film, real-life literary figures (including Arab poet Mahmoud Darwish and Spanish writerJuan Goytisolo) intermingle with actors; and documentary meshes with fiction.

“Notre Musique” also follows the parallel stories of two Israeli Jewish women, Judith Lerner(Sarah Adler) and Olga Brodsky (Nade Dieu); one drawn to the light and one drawn towardsdarkness.

Through evocative language and images, Godard explores a series of conflicting forces:

death; lifedark, light;good; bad

negative, positive;real; imaginary;

activists; storytellersvanquished; victor;criminals; victims;suicidal; hopeful

shot, reverse shot.

These opposing movements are eternal. They are the two faces of truth.

They are our music.

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KINGDOM 1: HELL

Bright flashes of explosions set off images of war throughout the ages: gunfire, airplanes, tanks,battleships, executions, devastated countrysides, the holocaust and the atomic bomb. We hear awoman’s voice:

And so, in the age of fableThere appeared on earth

Men armed for extermination

Black and white intertwines with color. Some images are documentary footage; and some aretaken from Hollywood movies like “Apocalypse Now,” “Zulu” and “Kiss Me Deadly.”

They’re horrible here.With their obsession for cutting off heads

It’s amazing that anybody survives.

All the images are silent; the only sound we hear is the spare pulsing of a solitary piano:sometimes played very delicately; sometimes furiously hammered.

We consider death two ways:The impossible of the possible

And the possible of the impossible

*

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KINGDOM 2: PURGATORY

Why Sarajevo?Because of Palestine

and because I live in Tel AvivI wanted to see a place where reconciliation was possible.

--Judith Lerner (Sarah Adler), “Notre Musique”

Jean-Luc Godard arrives in Sarajevo to give a lecture on “The Text and the Image” for theEuropean Literary Encounters. He meets Ramos Garcia (Rony Kramer), who tells him about hislife.

The Spanish novelist Juan Goytisolo gets in a car and is joined by an Israeli journalist, JudithLerner (Sarah Adler).

Godard gets in another car with another Literary Encounters guest. Someone asks Godard whyrevolutions aren’t started by humane people. “That’s because humane people don’t startrevolutions,” he says. “They start libraries.” “And cemetaries,” adds the guest.

Driving through the sites of the Bosnian war, Goytisolo says, “killing a man to defend an ideaisn’t defending an idea. It’s killing a man.”

In another car, Literary Encounter guest C. Maillard (Jean-Christophe Bouvet) speakspassionately about the terrible impact of war. “Violence leaves a permanent scar,” he says. “Tosee your fellow man turn on you leaves a feeling of deep-rooted horror.”

All the Literary Encounters people arrive for a reception at the mansion of French AmbassadorOlivier Naville (Simon Eine). After arranging a meeting with his former classmate, Frenchwriter Pierre Bergounioux, the Ambassador asks if writers know what they’re talking about. “Ofcourse not,” says the writer. He explains that people who act don’t have the ability to expressthemselves about what they do; and likewise people who tell stories don’t know what they’retalking about.

Judith Lerner tells Ambassador Naville that he gave shelter to a young man and his fiancée inVichy France in 1943; her mother was born in his apartment. Judith now wants to interview himabout Israel and the Palestinians from the point of view of his onetime resistance to the Nazis.She says she doesn’t want the diplomat—she wants the man himself. “Not a just conversation,”she says, “just a conversation.” Naville says that accepting her proposal might make it necessaryfor him to resign.

As he explores the ruins of the Sarajevo Public Library, Juan Goytisolo recites a poem about therevelation of the “better fate” of the dead, and how this helps people cross more peacefully intodarkness. A Native American couple approaches and the man speaks about the destructivelegacy of Columbus on his people. “Isn’t it about time for us to meet in the same age?” he asks.“Both of us strangers in the same land,” the woman continues, “meeting at the tip of an abyss.”

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In the lobby of the Sarajevo Holiday Inn, Judith Lerner interviews the celebrated Arab poetMahmoud Darwich. Darwich points out that the Trojan victims were only discussed through theliterature of the conquering Greeks, like Homer. As a Palestinian, he is a poet of the vanquished.

Olga (Nade Dieu), a Jewish Israeli of Russian descent, rushes through the streets of Sarajevo toattend Godard’s lecture. The director talks about the way language divides things. “Try toimagine; try to see,” he says. “With the first you say ‘look at that’; with the second you say‘close your eyes.’”

Godard calls the shot and the reverse shot the basics of film grammar. He shows parallel imagesof Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell from Howard Hawks’ “His Girl Friday,” and explains thatthe shots are the same because Hawks doesn’t see a difference between men and women. “It isworse with two things that are alike,” says Godard. “Truth has two faces.” He relates ananecdote about German scientist Werner Heisenberg and Danish physicist Niels Bohr and theirvisit to Elsinor Castle. Heisenberg thought that the castle was nothing special; Bohr countered,“when you say it’s Hamlet’s castle…then it’s special.”

A student asks, “Can the new digital cameras save the cinema?” Godard is silent.

Cinema is made with what is called negatives in every language.And you draw a positive from this.

And this specific element of photographyis a metaphor which is more than a metaphor, it’s a kind of reality.With digital, there’s no more negative; you’ve only got the positive.

You’ve only got the axis of good and not the axis of bad.—Jean-Luc Godard, Cannes Press Conference

Olga visits the Mostar Bridge. Famed architect Gilles Pecqueux is supervising the rebuilding ofthe bridge; he tells Olga about the symbolic importance of the work. “It’s not to restore the past;it’s to make the future possible.” Olga can’t respond to the spirit of hope symbolized by thebridge.

On the other hand, Judith takes pictures of the bridge, for her a significant step towards thehealing of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Full of joy, she sees the Native Americans leave in a truck andhas a vision of them in tribal outfits, returned to their glory. For Sarah, past and future are one;she isn’t afraid to dream.

Walking alone, Olga says to herself, “There are two people side by side. I’m next to her. I neversaw her before. I recognize myself.”

Olga meets with Ramos, who is her uncle. Filled with guilt by her identity as an Israeli and aJew, she wants to kill herself, but there are two things holding her back: the pain and her fear ofthe Next World. “There will be total liberty,” she says, “when it’s the same to live or die.”

The Encounters are over. Olga tries to give a video to Godard.

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French author and essayist Jean-Paul Curnier and C. Maillard are having a conversation in a bar.Curnier sees the world as divided into victims and criminals. People can always avoid beingtried as a criminals by accusing even bigger criminals—and thus becoming victims themselves.Victims can always get a hearing as they provide easy moral comfort to the dominant society.

The young people who work for the Encounters say goodbye to Godard at the airport. One giveshim Olga’s DVD. The director looks at Olga’s sad, beautiful face reflected on the shiny surfaceof the disc.

Back at his home, Godard is working in the garden when he receives a call from Ramos.Olga is dead. She took hostages in a cinema in Jerusalem, threatening to blow herself up. Afterletting the hostages go, marksmen killed her.

Approaching Olga’s lifeless body, they opened her shoulder bag. Inside were only books.

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KINGDOM 3: HEAVEN

Olga walks through a lush green forestIt is truly an idyllic settingexcept for the fences guarded by rifle-bearing Marines.

Olga walks by the waters edge.She passes a girl spinning strips of fabric on a string.A young man reads Street of No Return.Two couples in swimsuits play a lighthearted.game.

She sits down next to a soldier by the edge of the waterand they share an apple.

It was a fine clear day.You could see a long way off.But not as far as Olga had gone.

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In Sarajevo, the “Jew of the cinema” cultivates asense of optimism.From Le Monde - Interview by Jacques Mandelbaum and Thomas Sotinel

By happy coincidence, just as Europe is expanding and the cinema is wondering where its ownboundaries lie, Jean-Luc Godard went to Sarajevo to make “Notre Musique” (Our Music), aserious and optimistic film. He describes the genesis of the film and the sense of serenity hefound in an abandoned city where there is some hope of reconstruction.

Three years ago in Cannes, you said you already knew your next film would be called Notremusique.

Since A bout de souffle [Breathless, 1959], I’ve always known the names of my films ahead oftime. Whether it’s a stick or a carrot, that’s how it goes. It’s an indicator, a sound. Somethingcould be called such-and-such – so what do we need to do so that it can be called by that name?

What made you decide to divide the film into three parts: Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven?

One concept I share with Anne-Marie Miéville is making triptychs: a past, a present, a future;one image, another image and what comes between, what I call the real image, the third person,as in the Trinity. And I would call the third person the image, the image we don’t see, that comesfrom what we’ve glimpsed of what we will be seeing. For the rest, the cinema works in a naïveway technically, practically, just like that. And so when I went to Sarajevo, clearly it wasPurgatory. They had Hell before, now it’s Purgatory, but I don’t think they’ll ever have Heaven.

What principles were you following when you filmed the Hell segment, which is a montageof war images?

I’m always afraid that I’ll wind up with no more than an hour and 20 minutes of film. So therewas one hour for Purgatory, and I told myself we needed 10 minutes before and 10 minutesafterwards. Hell is quite long, with 10 minutes’ worth of documents, divided into four smallmoments, which is easier than going on for 10 minutes. The first part is all the wars, the secondis technology – tanks, aircraft, ships. The third is victims of war, and the fourth part is someimages of Sarajevo during the war, to introduce the Purgatory segment.

Why did you decide to mix documentary images and fiction?

I don’t make a big distinction between the two. You won’t see a couple kissing in adocument[ary], you’ll see it in a fiction film. I was thinking of the [Robert] Aldrich film Kiss MeDeadly and then showing a map of Hiroshima after the destruction, since the Aldrich film was ametaphor for the atomic bomb at the time.

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What made you want to go to Sarajevo?

I’d been there once or twice before. I was invited by the Rencontres du livre, and suddenly I saidto myself, that’s where this should take place, almost as if I was drawn to it. And then I’d rather– whether because I’m afraid or I just prefer it that way or want to be contrary, go there once thefire’s been extinguished, but there’s always something going on under the ashes wheneveryone’s gone. The place itself is abandoned, neglected again.

You put the Sarajevo Rencontres du livre up on the screen. How did you work with thewriters we see?

Juan Goytisolo had been there three times. There were some unknown writers whose prose Ifound interesting or touching. And then there was [the Palestinian poet] Mahmoud Darwish for abit of the Israel-Palestine theme, which was an underlying theme but I didn’t want to make it themain element. That would have turned it into a different film, let’s say the story of that Israelireporter or the story of Olga, the Jewish student of Russian origin. I wanted to show them all onequal terms, I wanted to be democratic, with both fiction and documentary, real actors and falseactors and no actors at all, and me intervening as a guest.

It’s almost a tribute to the written form.

Yes, a tribute to the written form by its greatest destroyer. But what I’m destroying is a way ofusing the written form that refuses to take images on equal terms.

Do we detect a certain disenchantment in the infernal beginning of the film, in the tone ofyour “cinema lesson”?

No, there was, but not any more. I’m just an ordinary citizen who’s disenchanted with a certainnumber of things. Once you get older sometimes you’re a little more disenchanted, but at thesame time enchanted with other things you discover with age. But there are so many things thatdon’t work – why is that?

I don’t see why they invented social security during the Liberation and then, 50 years later, itcan’t exist any more. And why they started to talk about retirement during the Liberation, butthat doesn’t work. The other day, I got a call from a contract worker. I told him, “If you want anhour-long discussion, go to my press conference. I’d be delighted not to do it.” He was talkingabout occupation, and I told him, “If you’re putting up a resistance, it’s hard to use the word‘occupation’.”

Three Jewish characters is a lot in one movie.

I’m the fourth. I’m a Jew of the cinema.

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You seem to be placing more and more emphasis on the fate of the Jews. Where does thatcome from?

It’s been a gradual process, because I’ve had to educate myself on the subject. At mygrandfather’s house – he was a collaborationist – we would listen to speeches by PhilippeHenriot every evening. During the war, my parents were part of the Swiss Red Cross, visitingrefugee camps. But no one ever explained to me what had happened.

Afterwards, bit by bit, I did some reading here and there and finally made some connections. Butbasically, I’ve never succeeded in knowing what it really means to be Jewish. The only way forme to understand it is to tell myself that I’m the same: I want to be with others, and at the sametime not with others. This is a feeling I have myself.

Exactly what do you mean by the parallel you make between Jews and Muslims in the film,based on the two photos of Nazi death-camp prisoners? Where did you get the photos youused for that?

The first photo is well known, it’s a picture of a prisoner with bulging eyeballs, which I believewas taken when the camps were liberated. The other photo, of a deported person, gives you thefeeling that the end is near. They’re the ones who were so exhausted physically they were nearlydead, who were called “Muslims” in the camps. I’ve always wondered how it happened that theGermans called Jews “Muslims.” And then I realized that this was where the Middle Eastconflict started. You’re in an apartment, and someone arrives and says, “I have been appointedby God; I will now occupy this apartment.” I wanted to make a movie about that with MarcelOphuls, where we would show the two of them in that apartment. We talked, we tried to solvethe question between ourselves, as if we had the power to do so, but it didn’t work out.

Isn’t it dangerous to suggest, as you do, a parallel between the extermination of the Jewsand the Palestinian exile due to the Middle East conflict?

Of course, I thought about that for a long time. When you put the two things side by side, theysay it’s disgusting. But how is it that no one – neither the Jews nor the Palestinians – has drawnthat parallel? And when I do that, I’m not thinking about it, I do it like a scientist bringingelements together. People would rather talk about something than really look at it. What I’msaying is, let’s look at the images. I would rather look [first], then talk about it afterwards.

In the dialogue between the Israeli journalist and the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish,they don’t speak the same language, but they seem to understand each other.

He understood her, because Darwish speaks Arabic and understands Hebrew, but she didn’tunderstand him, because she doesn’t speak Arabic, but she’s a good actress.

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The poet says, “We are fortunate that our enemy is Israel, because the Jews are the centre ofthe world.” What is your understanding of this idea that the Jewish people, the pariah ofthe nations for 20 centuries, is the centre of the world?

What does that mean, “the centre of the world”? Here’s how I understand it. There is somethingvery original about the Israelis, but they’ve introduced the idea of origin into their originality.Origin means that someone came first. They have theorized about all that, and so it’s completelynormal that what happened to them did happen to them, and they’ve been able to theorize aboutit because it happened to them.

Let’s move from the centre of the world to the masters of the world, the Americans, whoare also, in your film, the guards of Heaven…

I didn’t invent that. Everyone will credit me with making that anti-American comment, but youshould know that it comes from the last couplet of the Marines’ Hymn, which we’ve heard 100times from Ford or Hawks. How would I invent that? The Americans want to have everything…There are many lands on the American continent, so why is just that little bit of it calledAmerica? The U.S. knows very well that it’s the name of a country that has no land, people whohave no land, so they need to find their land somewhere else.

You’ve said that you feel you’re on the fringes of the cinema. Do you feel more sereneabout that experience today?

Of course I do, but it was Sarajevo that brought me that, Sarajevo as a metaphor for Europe, withpeople who feel that they’re separated from others and at the same time are with us, withsomething to be reconstructed together. That’s why my film is relatively serious, but also anoptimistic film.

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NOTRE MUSIQUE“Our Music”

The Filmmakers

JEAN-LUC GODARD

For five decades, Jean-Luc Godard has explored the frontiers of film, constantly reinventing andreinvigorating himself and demonstrating the immense potential of the cinematic form. Sincemaking his debut in 1954, he has made ninety short and feature films.

He made an enormous impact on the future direction of cinema, influencing filmmakers asdiverse as Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Jim Jarmusch, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, WimWenders, Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino and Wong Kar-Wai, among others.

Born into a wealthy family in Paris on December 3, 1930, Godard’s parents sent him to live inSwitzerland when the war broke out, and there he became a naturalized Swiss citizen. In the late‘40s he returned to Paris to study ethnology at the Sorbonne. There he met Claude Chabrol,Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, a group of passionate young filmmakersdevoted to exploring new possibilities in cinema. In May 1950, Godard, Truffaut and Rivetteteamed up to publish the monthly magazine La Gazette du Cinéma, which printed thoughNovember of that year. There he published his first critical pieces, both under his own name andthe pseudonym Hans Lucas. He also acted in early films by Rivette and Rohmer.

In 1952, Godard began writing for Cahiers du Cinéma, the influential film magazine alsocontributed to by Truffaut, Rohmer and Claude Chabrol, among others. In 1952, Godard returnedto Switzerland to work on the construction of the Grande-Dixence Dam. With his earnings, hewas able to finance his first short, “Operation Béton” (1954). While in Geneva, he made anothershort, “Une Femme Coquette” (1955), and then returned to Paris where he resumed writing forCahiers and made more short films: “Tous les Garçons s’appellent Patrick (1957), “Charlotte etson Jules” (1958) and “Une Histoire d’Eau” (1958, co-directed with Truffaut.)

In 1960, he made his debut with “Breathless,” his tribute to the American gangster movie, shotwithout a script (from a story outline by Truffaut) in a freewheeling style, with an innovative useof the jump cut. “Breathless” electrified audiences and helped (along with Truffaut’s “The 400Blows” and Alain Resnais’ “Hiroshima Mon Amour”) establish what came to be called theFrench New Wave. His next film, “Le Petit Soldat” (1960), was the first of eight movies hedirected which starred his wife, Anna Karina. His subsequent films, including “A Woman is aWoman” (1961), “Vivre sa Vie” (1962)” “Les Carabiniers” (1963), “Contempt” (1963), “Bandof Outsiders” (1964), “Alphaville” (1965) and “Pierrot Le Fou” (1965), brought himinternational fame. At this time, Godard was the most discussed director in the world, provokingextreme responses.

From 1966 to 1968, his films increasingly showed the influence of ‘60s radical politics and thecurrents which exploded in the May '68 riots: “Masculine-Feminine” (1966), “Two or ThreeThings I Know About Her” (1966), “La Chinoise” (1967, starring his second wife, AnneWiazemsky), “Weekend” (1967) and “Le Gai Savoir” (1968).

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From 1969 to 1974, Godard began collaborating with Jean-Pierre Gorin as the Dziga VertovGroup (after the Russian avant-gardist). Together, they made overtly political and revolutionarycinema, including “Wind From the East,” “Vladimir and Rosa,” “Tout Va Bien” (1972) and“Letter to Jane” (1972). These films were radical in content and style and based on ideas of classstruggle and dialectical materialism.

In 1972, Godard moved to Rolle, Switzerland, where he planned to remodel a video studio andestablish alternative means of production and distribution. There he began a partnership withSwiss filmmaker Anne-Marie Miéville, which continues to this day. At this time, he movedaway from radical politics, and returned to more personal material. Fascinated withdevelopments in new media, he and Miéville have experimented with video, making several oncommission for clients including Channel 4, France Telecom and UNICEF.

His subsequent films include “Numéro Deux” (1975), “Ici et ailleurs (1976), and in 1978 hereturned to France to make “Every Man for Himself” (1979, starring Isabelle Huppert). In 1980,Godard moved to California to work with Francis Coppola on a film about Bugsy Siegel, whichnever went into production. Returning to Paris, he began working on his “trilogy of thesublime”—“Passion” (1982), “First Name: Carmen” (1983, where he stars as himself), (1985),and his controversial “Hail Mary” (1985, a controversial modern retelling of the Virginbirth)—all concerned with feminine beauty and nature.

After his neo noir “Detective” (1985), Godard and Miéville produced “Soft and Hard” (1986),the TV film “Grandeur et Décadence d’un Petit Commerce de Cinema (1986), “Soigne taDroite” (1986) and “King Lear” (1986).

He followed with “Nouvelle Vague” (1990), “Germany 90 Nine Zero” (1991), “Hélas pour moi”(1993), “Forever Mozart” (1996, about a French theatre troupe trying to put on a play inSarajevo), and his highly regarded eight-hour series “Histoires du cinéma” (1997-98), also editedinto a 90-minute version.

His film “Éloge de l'amour” (In Praise of Love), partially about an elderly couple who are formerheroes of the Resistance, was acclaimed at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival and was released inthe U.S. the following year.

Godard’s next project is an omnibus film, “Paris, je t’aime,” in which he joins a number ofinternational directors—including the Coen Brothers, Mike Figgis, Walter Salles, Mira Nair,Tom Tykwer, Michel Gondry and Anne-Marie Miéville—in making a short film about a Parisarrondissement.

While Godard’s reputation as a reclusive figure is well known, he has displayed a humorous self-awareness both outside and inside his films (where he often appears as himself). He told TheNew Yorker that he and Miéville had clipped a cartoon from the paper which exemplifies theirsituation: a unicorn in a suit is sitting at a desk and talking on the phone with a caption reading“These rumors of my non-existence are making it very difficult for me to obtain financing.”

# # #

ANNE-MARIE MIÉVILLE (Art Director)

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Best known for her thirty-year collaboration with Godard—as a co-director, writer, producer,actress, art director and still photographer—Anne-Marie Miéville has also created a highlyacclaimed body of short and feature films on her own.

Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, Miéville met Godard in 1972 when she served as stillphotographer on “Tout Va Bien.” Among the films and videos Miéville has subsequently co-directed with Godard are “Ici et ailleurs” (1976, also wrote), “France/tour/detour/deux/enfants”(1977, also wrote) “Comment ça va?” (1978, also wrote), “Soft and Hard” (1986, also acted),“Comment vont les enfants” (1990), “Against Oblivion” (1991), “2 x 50 Years of FrenchCinema” (1995), and “Liberté et patrie” (2002, also wrote); some of her other notablescreenplays for Godard are “Every Man for Himself (1980), “First Name: Carmen” and“Detective” (1985).

After making a number of shorts, including “How Can I Love” (1983), “The Book of Mary”(1984), “Living it Up” (1987), Miéville made her feature debut with “My Favorite Story” (1988),followed by “Lou Didn’t Say No” (1993), “My Favorite Story,” “We’re All Still Here” (1997),and “After the Reconciliation” (2000). Her next project as director is a segment in the omnibusfilm “Paris, je t’aime.”

JULIEN HIRSCH (Director of Photography)

This is Julien Hirsch’s third collaboration with Jean-Luc Godard, after the acclaimed “Éloge del'amour” and the short “Ten Minutes Older: The Cello,” a segment in the Film “Dans le noir dutemps.” He first worked with Godard in 1993 as the first assistant cameraman on “Hélas pourmoi.”

Born in Paris, Hirsch works often in Spain and France. His recent films include “Soins etbeauté,” “Anywhere out of the World,” “Amour d’enfance,” “Novo,” “Motus,” “Zéro Défaut,”“Adieu,” “Clandestino,” and “Ordo.”

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NOTRE MUSIQUE“Our Music”

About the Cast

SARAH ADLER (Judith Lerner)

French actress Sarah Adler’s 1999 film “Afraid of Anything,” co-starring Nathalie Richard andwritten and directed by David Barker, was acclaimed upon its showing in New York this year.

She made her film debut with a small role in Benjamin P. Speth’s “Dresden” in 1999. Hersubsequent films include Itamar Kubovy’s “Upheaval” (2001), Frédéric Videau’s “Variétéfrançaise” (2003), Raphaël Nadjari’s “Avanim” (2004), and Richard Dembo’s (“DangerousMoves”) “La Maison de Nina” (2004).

She also appeared in David Barker’s play “Does Thinking Take Place Out Loud?”

NADE DIEU (Olga Brodsky)

Nade Dieu is best known for her role in Philippe Muyl’s 2002 film “The Butterfly (“LePapillon”), co-starring Michel Serrault.

Her other films include Vivian Goffete’s “Le Centre du monde” (2000), Pierre Schöller’s “Zérodéfaut” (2003), and Chantal Akerman’s “Demain on déménage” (2004), with Aurore Clément.

On television, Dieu has been seen in “Maigret et l’inpecteur Cadavre,” “Le Temps perdu,” “Y apas d’âge pour s’aimer,” and “La vie comme elle vient.”

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOUVET (C. Maillard)

Among Jean-Christophe Bouvet’s eighty film and TV movie credits are Maurice Pialat’ “UnderSatan’s Sun,” Cyril Collard’s “Savage Nights,” and the miniseries “The Count of Monte Cristo.”Bouvet is also a writer and a director, with numerous TV credits; his two films as awriter/director are “Le Dernier wagon” and “Les Dents de ma mère.”

SIMON EINE (The Ambassador)

Simon Eine has appeared in numerous films and TV movies in France, including ClaudeLelouch’s “Another Man, Another Chance,” Michel Deville’s “The Reader”, and Pierre Granier-Deferre’s “L’Autrichienne.”

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GEORGE AGUILAR (Indian)

George Aguilar’s film credits include “Ulzana’s Raid,” “The Trial of Billy Jack,” “BagdadCafé,” “The Scarlet Letter,” “The Stepford Wives,” and the French films “Le Fils du Français,”and “Le Mystère de la chambre jaune.” He has also appeared on such TV programs as “Oz,”“100 Centre Street,” “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Little House on the Prairie.”

LETICIA GUTIÉRREZ (Indian)

Leticia Gutiérrez is a Mexican actress who works in her own country and in France, where shehas studied extensively and appears on the stage. Her Mexican films include “Historias de unafamilia,” “Bedtime Fairy Tales for Crocodiles,” and “The Cornfield.”

As Themselves

MAHMOUD DARWISH

Mahmoud Darwish is one of the world’s most celebrated Arab poets. When he recites his poemsin Cairo, Beirut and Algiers—or in Paris or London—huge crowds come to mouth the verse withhim. His poetry is read and sung all over the Arabic speaking world. While he lives his life asan exiled Palestinian, he has never given up his Israeli citizenship. His poetry tells of his nativevillage, erased from the map in 1948, which is reborn through his words. In 1998, SimoneBitton and Elias Sanbar (who Godard gives the credit of “Memory” in “Notre Musique”) made afilm on Darwish entitled “Mahmoud Darwish: The Land as Language.”

The interview that Darwish gives to the fictional Israeli journalist Judith Lerner in “NotreMusique” is taken from an actual interview he gave to an Israeli journalist. Although he wasspeaking his own words, Mr. Darwish had to memorize his lines for the film; as Godard has said,“he was as much an actor as the actors.”

JUAN GOYTISOLO

While considered Spain’s greatest writer, Juan Goytisolo is an expatriate; he makes his home inMarrakech, Morocco. His novels banned in Franco’s Spain, he moved to Paris in 1954 where hemarried Monique Lange, who later became a writer. Bisexual, Goytisolo had an open marriagewith Lange. In the ‘60s, Goytisolo started to live part of the year in Morocco, often withoutLange. After Franco’s death, he had made Morocco and Paris his homes—and had no desire toreturn to Spain, a society he has brutally criticized through his books. Over time he has becomedeeply involved in Islamic culture, and from this perspective he has launched his criticism ofSpanish culture through thirty books of fiction, autobiography, essays and journalism.

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PIERRE BERGOUNIOUX

Pierre Bergounioux was born in 1949 Brive-la-Gaillarde in Corrèze (France). In 1974, afterreceiving his degree, he taught French in schools around Paris. He published his first novelCatherine (which he wrote in twelve days) in 1984. Since then, he has published nearly twentybooks, including novels and critical studies of artists and writers, such as Faulkner and Homer.

Also a sculptor, Bergounioux’s work involves smoldering together abandoned metalobjects—turning junk into things of beauty. His fiction is all set in the countryside, whereBergounioux pursues his passions, which include fishing and entomology.

JEAN-PAUL CURNIER

Born in Arles (in the French Riviera) in 1951, Jean-Paul Curnier is the author of numerousstudies on public cultural policies, aesthetics and the media. He also writes fiction, plays andmovies. From 1988 to 1991, Curnier was an advisor to the Minister of Culture and to UNESCO.Currently, he is a teacher at the University of Provence (Aix-Marseille) and editor of the weeklynewspaper Art and Culture.

GILLES PEQUEUX

Gilles Pequeux is a celebrated French architect who has been working since 1988 to restore thefamed Mostar Bridge in Sarajevo. Built by the Ottoman architect Mimar Hayruddin in 1566after nine years of work, the elegant arch of the bridge has amazed people throughout thecenturies. But it only took half an hour for the Croatian artillery to destroy it during the war,along with such treasures as the National Library of Sarajevo (its ruins are also seen in “NotreMusique”).

To this date, the city of Mostar remains divided; after living together for centuries, the CatholicCroats and the Muslim Bosnians live on opposite sides of the Neretva River. The restoration isbeing done using original stones recovered from the Neretva and 16th Century technology. ForMuslims and Croats, the rebuilding of the bridge is a powerful symbol of healing and rebirth.

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ABOUT WELLSPRING

IN CURRENT RELEASE

Cédric Kahn’s Red Lights starring Jean-Pierre Darroussin & Carole Bouquet

Vincent Gallo’s The Brown Bunny starring Vincent Gallo & Chloë Sevigny

COMING SOON

Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation executive produced by Gus Van Sant & John Cameron Mitchell

Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye Dragon Inn

Jean Luc-Godard’s Notre Musique

Jessica Yu’s In The Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger

Past releases include some of the most acclaimed and successful arthouse films of recent yearssuch as Russian Ark, hailed by Roger Ebert as "one of the most astonishing films ever made.,"Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece Ran, Strayed by André Téchiné, The Circle by Jafar Panahi, YiYi by Edward Yang, Under the Sand by François Ozon and Lorene Machado's Notorious C.H.O. Wellspring has fostered the careers of some of the most important directors in world cinematoday including Bruno Dumont (Life of Jesus, Humanité, Twentynine Palms), AlexanderSokurov (Russian Ark, Father and Son) Jafar Panahi (The Circle, Crimson Gold), Leos Carax(Mauvais Sang, Pola X), Tsai Ming-liang (The Hole, What Time is It There? Goodbye DragonInn), Olivier Assayas (Les Destinées), Claire Denis (Friday Night), Bahman Ghobadi (Maroonedin Iraq), Liz Garbus (Girlhood), André Téchiné (Strayed), Marina de Van (In My Skin) andKarim Ainouz (Madame Satã). Wellspring has also been committed to the theatrical re-releaseof classic films including the works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Demyand François Truffaut.

Together, the Wellspring Home Entertainment and Worldwide Sales libraries boast over 1,000titles including major works by François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, LuchinoVisconti, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, The Taviani Brothers, Peter Greenaway,Jacques Demy, Akira Kurosawa, Pedro Almodóvar, Michelangelo Antonioni and LinaWertmüller among others.

Wellspring’s Direct Response unit sells arthouse and specialty video/DVD titles via The VideoCollection and the artfilm collection direct mail consumer catalogs and websites,www.videocollection.com and www.artfilmcollection.com.

Wellspring Media, Inc. is a division of American Vantage Media Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of American Vantage Companies (NASDAQ: AVCS).