Posted on 10/20/2010 10:08:52 PM PDT by Nachum
If the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards French filmmaker Jean Luc Gadard an honorary Oscar on Nov. 13, Hollywood will be celebrating a man who defends Palestinian terrorism and who regularly equates Israel with Nazi Germany.
The filmmaker, renowned for his avant-garde “French New Wave” films, has described Israel as “a cancer on the map of the Middle East.” He has also suggested that the Jews murdered during the Holocaust had actually committed suicide in order to arouse international sympathy and bring about the formation of Israel.
Benjamin Ivry details some of Godard’s most egregious comments at the Jewish Daily Forward:
Godard, as [his biographer] Antoine de Baecque observes, justifies every act of Arab resistance, including terrorism, by saying that ‘Israel is a paradoxical form of Nazism’s historical resurgence.’ In a 1970 short documentary filmed for German TV, Godard brandished a tract with the slogan “NazIsrael” emblazoned on it and told the cameraman, ‘Write us a check from German television, which is financed by Zionists and that idiotic Social Democrat, Willy Brandt, and that will let us buy weapons for the Palestinians to attack Zionists,’ as de Baecque further recounted …
(Excerpt) Read more at cultureandmediainstitute.org ...
But meanwhile, they through a hissy fit when they awarded Elia Kazan his award.
“Breathless” guy? I didn’t know he was still kicking.
Yeah, bashing Israel is so cutting-edge...
It’s funny, I am a movie junkie, love foreign and obscure flicks, the weirder the better, and yet I find Godard a crashing bore. I have tried to watch Breathless, I think, THREE times and haven’t been able to get through it. I got through Alphaville and couldn’t figure out what the fuss was about. I DID enjoy Weekend, which has some weird moments and one of the biggest (intentional) laughs I’ve ever gotten out of a movie.
Everything else of his I’ve tried I’ve either bailed on or it left no impression.
And yet...everyone says he’s a genius. I dunno, maybe I’m just common. Somehow I’ll survive.
Two words: Anna Karina. She made his films watchable.
How about the real Oscar folks, wouldn’t they take umbrage at someone else awarding “honorary” Oscars?
Was it not our General Ike that said “Take lots of pictures, for some bastards will say it never happened!”
That was after the defeat of Germany, and they found the living and dead victims in the mass extermination camps.
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