<i>A wide-ranging and  accessible approach to Godard&rsquo;s later work, and a major intervention in the  study of film aesthetics and ethics.</i><br><br>

  <i>Encounters with Godard</i> takes the reader on a personal voyage into the sensory  pleasures and polyphonic rhythms of Jean-Luc Godard&rsquo;s multimedia  work since the late 1970s, from his feature films and video essays to his  published writings, art books, and media performances. Godard, suggests James S.  Williams, lays ethical claim to the cinematic, defined in the broadest terms as  relationality and artistic resistance. An  introductory chapter on the extended history of <i>La Chinoise</i> (1967), a  film explicitly of montage, is followed by seven different types of critical  encounters with Godard, encompassing the fields of art and photography, music and literature, and foregrounding themes  of gender and sexuality, race and violence, mystery and emotion. The Godard who  emerges here is a restless and radical experimenter who establishes new  cinematic thresholds through new technology and expands the creative potential  and free exchange of the archives. Williams examines works including <i>Nouvelle vague</i> (1990), <i>Film socialisme</i> (2010), <i>H&eacute;las pour moi</i> (1993), and the magnum  opus <i>Histoire(s) du cin&eacute;ma</i> (1988&ndash;98).  Wide-ranging and accessible, <i>Encounters with Godard</i> marks a major intervention in the study of film aesthetics  and ethics while forging a vital dialogue with literature, history and  politics, art and art history, music and musicology, philosophy, and  aesthetics.<br><br>

  &ldquo;A landmark contribution to our understanding of Godard and  of modernist expression as a whole.&rdquo; &mdash; David Sterritt, author of <i>The Films of Jean-Luc Godard: Seeing the  Invisible</i><br><br>

  &ldquo;Writing with a delirious lucidity, Williams opens Godard to  debate and dialogue that informs, extends, opens, and illuminates what may be  the greatest and most complex body of cinema of the last half-century.&rdquo; &mdash; Tom  Conley, author of <i>Film Hieroglyphs:  Ruptures in Classical Cinema</i>