Jean-Luc Godard’s Early Films: Posters Designed by Gvido Augusts @ BAMPFA

There is a story behind these exceptional posters, which were recently acquired for the BAMPFA collection. Commissioned nearly sixty years ago by Tom Luddy (1943–2023), then the Program Director of the Pacific Film Archive, the works in Jean-Luc Godard’s Early Films: Posters Designed by Gvido Augusts were designed by the American painter and graphic artist Gvido Augusts (1932–2022) on the occasion of Jean-Luc Godard’s first visit to Berkeley in March 1968 for a retrospective of his films. This groundbreaking event was one of the early accomplishments of Luddy, who would serve as Director of the Pacific Film Archive between 1974 and 1980. Luddy always loved this series of posters. He gave his personal copy of his favorite, La chinoise, to Henri Langlois, Cofounder and Director of La Cinémathèque française, for its museum in Paris.

After all these years, BAMPFA has acquired a complete set of Augusts’s posters, many of which relate to Berkeley cultural events (film, theater, and concerts). Augusts studied art at San Jose State College and the San Francisco Art Institute and majored in animation at Foothill College. He lived in Los Altos, California, at the time the posters were created.