FRANCE/TOUR/DETOUR/DEUX/ENFANTS. MOUVEMENT 1-4

In this astonishing twelve-part project for and about television – the title of which refers to a 19th-century French primer “Le Tour de la France par deux enfants” by Augustine Fouillée – Godard and Miéville take a detour through the everyday lives of two children in contemporary France. This complex, intimately scaled study of the effect of television on the French family is constructed around Godard’s interviews with a school girl and a school boy, Camille and Arnaud. The children’s interviews (titled “Verité”) and scenes of their everyday routines at home and at school (“Télévision”) are followed by the ironic commentary of two adult television journalists (“Histoire”) who provide a history/story that elaborates on the interviews. Intercut with multi-textual collages of television, cinema and advertising images, these discursive visual essays analyze the economic, social and ideological functions of the mass media.