15 - Revolting Formats: Hellmuth Costard’s Der kleine Godard: An das Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film

Summary

It is hard to know when the right moment to shoot has come. In the opening of Hellmuth Costard’s Der kleine Godard: An das Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film (The Little Godard: To the Production Board for Young German Cinema, 1978), two girls at the lake exit the frame just when the music reaches its climax. The sound of French television, Les actualités Gaumont—Reflets d’automne, plays over the scene: “Holiday atmosphere on Super-8. Maybe also a home movie from the Alster.”They are playing apportieren, master and dog. One girl throws the stick and the other, the loyal servant, brings it back. Exaggerated movements, throwing the bounty farther out. Der kleine Godard is interested in rehearsals of retrieval. When the girls suddenly walk off the scene, the film fetches a quote from the past about the importance of timing.White typed text is superimposed over the lake, but ephemeral, appearing and fading away in four parts. “Bruno (off): ‘Each time the coast was clear, no witness … / … I hesitated a few seconds … / … and once again it was too late.’ / ‘LE PETIT SOLDAT’ Jean-Luc Godard 1960.” It is attributed to 1960, the year when production on the film was finished, and not 1963, when the ban on it was lifted and it was released, a result of the Algerian War having come to an end. The title of the film is also left in French, not translated as “The Little Soldier,” which would correspond with Bruno’s voice-off that is quoted in English. The film cuts to typed text on screen, not hovering over a lake this time, but more permanent, imprinted on paper. It is read out loud by Costard. “1974. Our Hamburg filmmakers’ cooperative has finally collapsed.” The film co-op was founded in 1968 amid appeals for “a different cinema,” but by the mid-seventies, while New German Cinema was critically and financially flourishing, Costard and others had to explore new methods of production and alternative institutions for support and distribution.This included Jean-Luc Godard, whose negotiations with the Cultural Committee of Hamburg about a potential artist-in-residence stipend are documented in detail in Der kleine Godard, setting up a parallel with Costard, as indicated in the film’s subtitle that mimics the address in the letter he is drafting to a funding committee.