1968 was an exceptionally busy year for Jean-Luc Godard, who completed films in France and the UK (One Plus One) and developed unfinished projects in Cuba (Cub(us)a), Canada and the USA (One American Movie, aka One A.M.).

One American Movie was devoted to the signs of what Godard perceived to be the impending ‘New American Revolution’, which he identified in the activities of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, the New Left, the Blank Panther Party, the Youth International Party (Yippies), and the pacifist Resistance and Ultra-Resistance anti-draft groups. This interest in emergent forms of political resistance in the USA in this period was shared by his friend Agnès Varda, who documented the protests in support of imprisoned Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton in her film Black Panthers.

D.A. Pennebaker, with whom Godard had had an unrealised project earlier in the decade (alongside Richard Leacock), had captured the countercultural currents that fed into the so-called Summer of Love of 1967 in his landmark festival film, Monterey Pop, documenting now legendary performances by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Otis Reading, The Who, Jefferson Airplane and Ravi Shankar.

Godard’s plan for One American Movie was for a ten-part film made up of five documentary sections, to be shot by Pennebaker and Leacock in uninterrupted ten-minute takes, and five corresponding fiction or ‘art’ sections, in which the contents of the documentary footage would be reenacted by actors. The themes he sought to investigate were: American capital/imperialism; Black Power; music/beatniks; the New Left; and Black childhood.

He cast, among others, Jefferson Airplane; the Minister of Information for the Black Panther Party, Eldridge Cleaver (who had already featured prominently in Varda’s Black Panthers); one of the leading New Left activists, Tom Hayden; and the actor Rip Torn.

His intention was for the documentary and fiction sections to be juxtaposed and – as with One Plus One and the unmade Cub(us)a – for the ten-minute ‘blocks’ to be strung together with little or no editing. After completing filming in December 1968, however, Godard prevaricated for a long time over what to do with the footage, which he was not satisfied with. He eventually shelved it definitively in spring 1970.

Meanwhile, Pennebaker drew on some of the material that he and Leacock had filmed for One American Movie, blending it with the audiovisual ‘notes’ depicting Godard at work that he had filmed at his own initiative during the shoot, to make One P.M. (short for One Parallel Movie, One Pennebaker Movie, or even One Perfect Movie).

Pennebaker’s film is a very long way from Godard’s plans for One American Movie. It does however provide a fascinating documentary record of the making of Godard’s abandoned film while offering an extended critique by Pennebaker of Godard and his methods.

This screening will be introduced by Michael Witt.

Programme
Monterey Pop, dir. D.A. Pennebaker, USA 1968, 79 min
Black Panthers, dir. Agnès Varda, USA 1968, 31 min
One P.M., dir. D.A. Pennebaker, USA 1971, 95 min.