Thesentür: Conscientious Objector to Formalism is a series of minimal image- and quotation-based works using poetry to confront mainstream art criticism and art history, to look beneath the surface politics of aesthetics and formalism in a presentation of art that is not self-referential or to put a Black face on the art history of imperialism.
Les Lunettes-Jumelles de La Jetée, courtesy Cinémathèque française, 2019 The remarkable, intimidating glasses of Marker’s chez-d’oeuvre La Jetée — which added so much nuance to the terror-ridden environment of the memory experiment — have been unearthed recently by the Cinémathèque française, and presented in a post by Hervé Pichard. The glasses were a gift to the Cinémathèque from the daughter of Pierre Joffroy. Joffroy played the chief torturer...
And if a character could gain autonomy, independence? If he could create not only holes in time but also holes in films, faults, bridges, places of passage? If he could escape from his movie and join another? - Luc Lagier
Some Chris Marker news, video and views that have come to light of late... These include the republication of Marker's masterful 1959 book Coréennes; a trailer from the Centre Pompidou's 2013 retrospective, featuring a parade of elephants; and finally, a stunning collection of photographs of the Cinémathèque française 2018 Chris Marker Exhibition design — giving a sense of the visitor experience via photos of the spatial design, signage and viewing spaces.
Raymond Bellour, while one of the most influential early theorists of cinema and the moving image, remains less well known among contemporary film scholars than he should be, even though he has exerted a formative influence on the field at large. One reason for this neglect is that his work is scattered across a myriad of essays published in French, the majority of which have not been translated into English.
The Archive, Darke relates, homes two treasures: the film’s twin – an alternative version of La Jetée – and a workbook ‘containing an editing plan and a collection of correspondence between Marker and Jacques Ledoux, the former director of the Film Archive’ (13), both of which served as principal displays in Chris Marker: A Grin Without a Cat, the Whitechapel Gallery installation that Darke co-curated in London with Christine van Assche and Magnus Af Petersens...
Vincent Jacques' book Chris Marker, CHRIS MARKER, LES MÉDIAS ET LE XXe SIÈCLE. LE REVERS DE L'HISTOIRE CONTEMPORAINE proposes a reflection on the role of the image in the mediatization of contemporary history, by examining Chris Marker's work.
Found on YouTube in the Guillaume-en-Egypte channel, this is a video, independently produced and uploaded in 2017, of the playing of an interactive CD-Rom, Immemory, created by Chris Marker originally in 1997.
Happy Holidays.
"Although the use of drawings, photographs, or other still images within a film became more common with the films of Jean-Luc Godard in the mid-1960s, the use of animated techniques was still rather rare for this period. Chris Marker’s use of animation techniques was therefore rather unique for an art film of this time. The lack of discussion of animation within Marker’s works, then, is a curious omission."
Chris Marker, encyclopedist… The article translated by Sophie Kovel is really more of a condensed thought-association that starts with the publication of a willfully obscure volume of a kind of anti-encyclopedia, and goes on to play with some of the words contained therein, such as “hectoplasm”, “et cetera” and “exaggeration.” Marker is at his dry, wittiest self here. The piece, published under the rubric “Science and...