Histoire(s) du cinéma

The entire project spans exactly eight chapters and has a total runtime of roughly 266 minutes, which is about four and a half hours. It was created by the French-Swiss filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard over a ten-year period. Because of its dense, collage-like editing style, the viewing experience is incredibly intense and requires deep concentration.

Godard's central argument is that cinema failed to prevent the atrocities of the 20th century, particularly the Holocaust, despite its unique ability to document history. The title is a deliberate pun, meaning both the history of cinema and the stories cinema tells. It functions as a highly subjective, video-essay memoir blending film clips, literature, poetry, and classical music.

Because it is an experimental, highly copyrighted montage work, Histoire(s) du cinéma is notoriously difficult to find on mainstream commercial streaming services like Netflix. It is occasionally screened at specialized film retrospectives, art-house museums, or educational institutions. Independent archives and certain video-focused streaming platforms sometimes host copies for study purposes.

Jean-Luc Godard worked on this massive video project between 1988 and 1998, releasing the chapters incrementally over a decade. The first four chapters (titled 1A and 1B) were actually shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991. The complete, eight-part series was finally published as a comprehensive set in the late 1990s.