Director Jean-Luc Godard treated fans to a 90-minute masterclass on Instagram Live yesterday (April 8) where he spoke about his creative techniques and gave advice to aspiring filmmakers.

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Godard, 89 – a pioneer of the ’60s French New Wave film movement – spoke from his home in Switzerland while smoking a cigar for a masterclass hosted by Lionel Baier, head of the cinema department of ECAL (University of Art and Design Lausanne).

During the stream the director talked about his working methods, saying: “I write by hand if possible. Before I typed, but I prefer to write by hand. Very often I write very small. Afterwards, I cannot read myself again. So I have to rewrite it,” [as translated from Le Matin].

Elsewhere, he spoke about “the inadequacy of language”, a topic explored in his works, as well as how he would approach getting into the film industry should he be wanting to do so in the 21st century.

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UPDATE: Available soon with English subtitles on www.ecal.ch – #ECAL #Instagram #Live with #legendary #Swiss & #French #filmmaker #JeanLucGodard – discussing the topic of «images in times of Coronavirus» with #LionelBaier – Head of ECAL #Cinema Department – Tuesday 14h30 (CEST) @ecal_ch – #instagood #typeface Rungli by @kplehmann @ecal_ch

A post shared by ECAL (@ecal_ch) on Apr 6, 2020 at 2:59am PDT

“During the New Wave, I thought that cinema should be taught at the University. As now it takes a baccalaureate X years for everything, I would rather recommend that they go home and do something else.”

Additionally, as C News reports (translated to English via Google Translate), the À bout de souffle’ director said of the COVID-19 pandemic: “the virus is a communication: like what we are doing…of which we are not going to die, but maybe we are not able to live well.”