About

The troubled circumstances of a film's production have rarely been as visible as they are in Jean-Luc Godard's stubborn non-adaptation of 'King Lear', which begins with an answer machine message from the film's financiers pleading for updates on its progress, and grows only more self-reflexive from there. Having signed a contract on a paper napkin at the Cannes Film Festival, guaranteeing him a fee of $1 million for a big-screen version of 'King Lear' written by Norman Mailer and starring Woody Allen, the ever-intransigent Godard set about fulfilling his obligations in spectacularly bad faith. Both Allen and Mailer appear, but only fleetingly, while the bulk of the film's runtime is instead surrendered to a typically Godardian rumination on art, apocalypse and the act—so brashly abandoned here—of adaptation.

King Lear will screen from an imported 35mm print.

Ages 15+