At some point, Godard was commissioned by a town called Lausanne in Switzerland to make a film celebrating their 500th anniversary. What he made instead was a response to why he was unable to do so, a reply which is not for everyone but for me was exceptionally thoughtful. Godard's best work for me for the most part is actually outside his films and is what he says in interviews etc.,. but here the two are combined to make a very poignant short on the issues of filmmaking.

Godard's filmed letter admittedly provokes one's tendency to zone out, his somewhat highfalutin conversational tone serving to bring home the short's definite sense of ownage without engaging external listeners as readily as in the auteur's grander works of fiction (Breathless, Charlotte and Her Jules, etc.). It's amazing that, twenty-eight years after this, the Academy were still dumb enough to think he'd instinctively accept an honorary Oscar with open arms.