For student filmmakers, a tight budget is a given. For renowned French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, it was a must.

“Godard is someone that film students are usually interested in and can benefit a lot from looking at because of his ability to innovate on a budget,” said David Pendelton, programmer for the UCLA Film and Television Archive’s most recent series, “For Ever Godard,” which began on Saturday and continues through June 2.

Godard is best known for his influence during the French New Wave (or “Nouvelle Vague”) of the 1950s and ’60s. Through his artistic experimentation, Godard challenged the commercialization of cinema.

“Godard and his work are examples of the modernist text – films that call attentions to themselves,” said film professor Maria Elena de la Carreras. “The way the story is told is as important as the events that unfold. So he makes you become critical, to open your eyes.”

Like other New Wave artists, Godard tended to reject the extravagances of capitalist films, often choosing to shoot with a minimal budget, on location and with nonprofessional actors.

The rebellion seen in Godard’s work is comparable to that of Rossellini (the focus of the theater’s first major series) during Italian neorealism, which inspired the French New Wave.

“They do go together although they’re very different filmmakers,” said Pendelton.

“Rossellini’s much more interested in capturing reality, whereas Godard is much more interested in using cinema to analyze history and society.”

Perhaps most intriguing is Godard’s tendency to work in phases of cinematic style.

“(His) influence has remained strong over the years – which is quite an achievement in itself – probably because Godard never stopped searching,” said Laurent Morlet, executive director of the General Consulate of France in Los Angeles.

The consulate hosts film and television events, offers support to major film festivals, and seeks to connect French and American professionals of the film industry.

“His cinema is always in motion, looking for something and experimenting again and again,” Morlet added.

Godard’s debut film, “Breathless” (1960) is also his most famous.

“(The film) really helped put the French New Wave on the map. (It established) the jump cut, the abrupt edit, ... a well-known marker for his own visual style and for the French New Wave in general,” Pendelton said.

In the late ’60s and early ’70s, Godard defined his style via the rejection of narrative and any film considered bourgeoisie or capitalist.

“As the political upheavals of the late 1960s began to build, Godard got more skeptical of commercial cinema’s ability to adequately respond to a changing society,” Pendelton said.

During this period, Godard produced “Le Gai savoir,” which rejected narrative as a political statement, and “Ici et ailleurs,” on which Godard collaborated with director Anne-Marie Miéville. Both films will screen in the series.

“(He shows) how a modernist filmmaker takes elements of popular culture and turn them upside down,” said Carreras.

In the early to mid-1970s, he went through a period of experimenting with video, documentary-style film and television.

Then, at the end of the 1970s, he came back to feature films with the comic drama, “Every Man For Himself,” which returned to storytelling after a long period of non-narrative work.

On April 28, the theater will screen Godard’s “Histoire Du Cinéma,” a four-and-a-half-hour-long history and critique of film. Switching between documentary and fictional style, the film is a collage of film clips, sounds and images.

And in 2004, Godard played himself in “Notre Musique,” a reflection on war in relation to cinema.

With a career that spans over 50 years, Godard has established himself as a multidimensional filmmaker. The “For Ever Godard” series will be a tour of his evolution and transformation, chronicling his changing cultural concerns in regard to politics, film techniques and ideologies.

For close to a year, the UCLA Film and Television Archive has been collecting Godard films for the series. While many of the films come from the archive’s own collection, others were commercially available, and still others are from England and France.

“Having Godard in (the archive’s) new home at the Billy Wilder Theater is a true honor,” Morlet said.

“This is really a great and exceptional event, having the opportunity to discover or rediscover the essential work of this master of cinema.”