On another Tuesday, film lovers gathered in our large hall to watch a selection of French films at the Cinema Club. On December 3, Jean-Luc Godard's birthday, his outstanding film "The Book of Images" was shown, which awarded a special prize at the 71st Cannes Film Festival.

The legend of world cinema Jean-Luc Godard is one of the key figures of the French New Wave, whose films of the 1960s forever changed the approach to cinema as an art form. "The Book of Images" is an unusual film even for a prepared audience. The film has almost no plot but is filled with visual quotations and references from cinema and fine art. This montage video with no performers and a simple plot is full of fictitious imagery. It is not exhausting, and Godard retains his ferocious and manic energy with the assistance of an internal system to which few have access.

Perhaps the key to understanding the film is hidden in the title itself: Le livre d'image can be translated as "picture book" or "illustrated textbook". The visual quotations from works of art and cinema are fascinating... The text turns into an impenetrable mishmash, and the images become increasingly rich and dark.

Watching "The Book of Images" is difficult. The film poses riddles to the viewer, to which you want to return, trying to unravel the hidden meaning of the images presented.

We witnessed this on December 3 at the Film Club of the National Library. The Film Club of the National Library of Armenia has been operating for the third year in a row in cooperation with the Film Culture Development NGO “Filmadaran”, the National Library, and the Embassy of France in Armenia/French Institute and presents a selection of films for film lovers. The films are shown in French with Armenian and English subtitles.