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Originally published in 16:9 filmtidsskrift on 30 April 2018. Reprinted with the agreement of the author. Seb Doubinsky can be found on Twitter at @sebdoubinsky Chris Marker, La Jetée (1962) La Jetée (1962) is probably French director Chris Marker’s best-known short film. A dark science-fiction story shot in black and white and using only stills, it has become cult and a reference for many film directors. For instance, Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys (1995) has been...
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...
The Unattainable Text Raymond Bellour That the film is a text, in the sense in which Barthes uses the word, is obvious enough. That as such it might, or should, receive the same kind of attention as has been devoted to the literary text is also obvious. But already not quite so obvious. We shall soon see why. The text of the film is indeed an unattainable text. In saying this, despite the temptation of a play on words, I do not mean to evoke the special...
John Fitzgerald is a periodic contributor to chrismarker.org, and we would like to extend our gratitude to him for crafting this piece for us. Previously he has written In a Train of the Métro, Passengers and A Grin Without a Cat, Lincoln Center. A question that arose toward the end of my recent visit to Peter Blum Gallery in New York to view the Chris Marker “Koreans” exhibition is illustrative of the veil of mystery that hangs over so much of his life and work...
JOHN FITZGERALD All images courtesy the artist and Peter Blum Gallery, New York. PASSENGERS is Chris Marker’s second photographic exhibition featuring images from the Paris Métro. These days, if I wanted to somehow meet Chris Marker, I would probably go to Paris and ride the trains all afternoon hoping for a glimpse of him—it is becoming his natural habitat. But why is an artist/filmmaker/writer, whose work has literally taken him all over the entire world, now so...
[Guest post by John Fitzgerald. Thanks John! – ed.] Walking over to Peter Blum Gallery in Chelsea to see the new Chris Marker exhibition, I happened to pass by a section of the newly completed High Line, a pedestrian greenspace retrofitted onto an old elevated train track on the West Side. I stopped to look at a curious feature of the renovation: a glass panel cut into the side of the wall overlooking Tenth Avenue. Behind the glass was tiered seating where...
Ouvroir in Second Life — the drowned airplane recalls moments of Sans Soleil, even Le Coeur net… Presented below is the official press release distributed by The Harvard Film Archive for its upcoming film series and live event. You can also view the program at the HFA site. THE HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE PRESENTSTHE SECOND LIFE OF CHRIS MARKERMAY 9 – MAY 16, 2009 CAMBRIDGE, MA: The Harvard Film Archive is thrilled to host a virtual event with legendary filmmaker...
We received a thoughtful note from Don Livoni @ fogblog regarding his recent discovery of Chris Marker. Crafting a haunting film from stills is a discovery that evidently can be made without prior knowledge of La Jetée. It's a bit like Leibniz and Newton, albeit with a time “differential,” if you like ;). While Mr. Livoni's films (for example, “Rosie's Girls” and “DNYK Dreamer”) evoke La Jetée by the skillful sequencing of...
A couple of blasts from the past came to town this weekend, one bringing the other. Dirk K., a longtime Chris Marker fan, touched base and we met for extended coffee and cigarettes, like a Jim Jarmusch outtake scene. DK brought a gift of utmost rarity: a hardcover copy of the 1950 Club francais du livre's reprinting of Le Coeur net (Roman de Chris Marker, Préface de Jean Cayrol), numbered 1618 out of 3000. The novel, Marker's first (La Jetée, being a hyphenated...
by John Fitzgerald I didn’t see A Grin Without A Cat when it first came out in 1977. My first encounter with it was this past year on a small monitor in a university library – even Kim’s in the East Village didn’t have a copy. From the first few frames I could sense what a monumental film it was: shots of people in the streets, on the march, all over the world. But, being so monumental, I realized also it was something that really needed to be seen in the dark, in...
