Chris Marker

Chris Marker Collection, a 3 DVD set of Chris Marker films published to coincide with the Whitechapel exhibition currently running in London, is out! The 3 DVD collection of Chris Marker films was published June 2, 2014 by SODA Film+Art and is now available for purchase. It’s a thrilling addition to Marker’s English-language releases. Without further ado, here are the overall details on the release.

Note: Soda Pictures is now Thunderbird Releasing and here is Thunderbird’s Chris Marker page.

Contents

BLU-RAY

• Sunday in Peking (Dimanche á Pékin, 1956, 22 min)
• Letter From Siberia (Lettre de Sibérie, 1958, 62 min)

DVD 1

• Sunday in Peking (Dimanche á Pékin, 1956, 22 min)
• Letter From Siberia (Lettre de Sibérie, 1958, 62 min)
• Description of a Struggle (Description d’un combat, 1960, 60 min)

DVD 2

• The Sixth Side of the Pentagon (La Sixiéme face du Pentagone, 1968, 27 min)
• The Embassy (L’Ambassade, 1973, 20 min)
• Theory of Sets (Théorie des ensembles, 1991, 11 min)
• Three Video Haikus (Trois Vidéo Haikus, 1994, 3 min)
• Blue Helmet (Casque blue, 1996, 26 min)
• E-CLIP-SE (1999, 8 min)
• The Case of the Grinning Cat (Chats perchés, 2004, 59 min)

Blu-Ray tech info: Aspect ratio: 4:3 | Running time: 80 mins. approx. | Audio LPCM 2.0 Stereo
Language English/French with English subtitles S| Region B | Colour | 1080p | 24fps

DVD Tech info: Aspect ratio: 4:3 | DVD 1 Running time: 134 mins. approx. | DVD2 Running time: 154 mins. approx. | PAL
Language English/French with English subtitles | Audio Dolby Digital 2.0 Sterio | Region 2 | 1080p | 24fps

Passion for Words, Madness for Images

This collection of Chris Marker films consists of three works that pre-date La Jetée, the featurette that firmly planted his name as a filmmaker, as well as a series of seven shorter films that span each decade of his career thereafter. These remarkable curios reveal much about him, his ideas and his visuality, as well as his take on the modern world from an artistic point-of-view – from China, Siberia and Israel in the 1950s to the Pentagon, art collectives, cheshire cats, haikus and early new media.

Released in conjunction with a major exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery, London, and with a new piece by writer and curator Chris Darke (Rediscovering Chris Marker), alongside a seminal early piece by Roger Tailleur (Markeriana: A Scarcely Critical Description of the Work of Chris Marker).

About Soda Film + Art

Soda Film + Art (SoFA) is an international agency that focuses on visual artists working in feature filmmaking. It operates at the nexus of film and art, and acts as a centralized bureau for development, production, sales, distribution and exhibition support. SoFA also has a collectible DVD label, with bespoke packaging that is unique to each title and artist vision, but together forms a cohesive library – and ultimately an overview of what’s happening in art + film today. sodapictures.squarespace.com | www.sodapictures.com/about-us/

Purchase: thunderbirdreleasing.squarespace.com/…

Rediscovering Chris Marker

By 2002, it was evidently no longer enough to describe Marker simply as a ‘filmmaker’; cinema was merely one of the forms into which this prolific artist had channeled his protean creativity. When Marker died in July 2012, aged 91, he left behind an utterly singular body of work. From his first appearance in print as an author in 1946 to his final film, a 60-second ‘trailer’ for the 2012 Vienna film festival, his oeuvre spanned over 65 years and was remarkable in its scope. He designed and edited books, published journalism and essays, as well as a novel and short stories. As a visual artist, he was an accomplished photographer, cartoonist, and multimedia practitioner. But he remains best remembered as a filmmaker, with more than forty-five titles to his name and over thirty more as a commentary-writer or editor.
Chris Darke, “Rediscovering Chris Marker”, Chris Marker Collection booklet, 5