1988, 20:15 min, color, sound
This idiosyncratic view of Tokyo begins with a live mannequin in a store window and French actress Arielle Dombasle chatting with Marker as they wander around Tokyo. After Dombasle departs, the tape continues with footage from the Tokyo subway and an indoor market. Marker punctuates the tape throughout with playful visual and sound edits.
In Japanese and French.
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watch it:
FR/USA/UK, 53 min
Melvin van Peebles’ look at the representation of blacks in the history of American cinema, made for European TV
FR, 54 min
chris marker’s look at japan, the individual, society, the ’64 olympics, humanity… preverberations of sans soleil
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watch it:
L’héritage de la chouette
13 episodes x 26 min.
chris marker’s television series investigating the legacy of ancient greek culture in the modern world
Ciné-Tracts
FR, 68 min
A series of documentary shorts, directed (without credit) by several famous French filmmakers, each running between two and four minutes. Each “tract” espouses a leftist political viewpoint through the filmed depiction of real-life events, including workers’ strikes and the events of Paris in May ’68.
slightly elaborated description from LUX agency (via chrismarker.org) :
Made by politically committed film-makers to serve as agit-prop for the events of May ‘68, these films rely exclusively on stills rather than documentary footage, yet the sense of contrast and movement is very strong and the films very effectively make their point; they attempt to catch the spirit, rather than the fact, of the May Revolution. And although made anonymously, one can detect the hands of Godard, Marker et. al.
an essay (pdf)
godard begins love affair with video
he wishes this were sans soleil
The Case of the Grinning Cat
Fr / 59 min
Master cinema-essayist Chris Marker whimsically reflects on art, culture and politics at the start of the new millennium, documenting the appearances of a charming graffiti’d grinning yellow cat in Parisian streets—the work of an anonyous street artist dubbed Monsieur Chat. Monsieur Chat meets French politics as the capital’s streets are the stage for a changing social climate—from the pro-American feelings generated shortly after September 11, to the anti-Bush and Iraq War demonstrations that later became prevalent, as well as the public response to the 2002 French presidential elections that shockingly pitted right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen against center-right Jacques Chirac. Chats perchés highlights the vital importance of expressions of art and imagination in our public lives. – filmfestival.french.uiuc.edu
imdb :: face council
CLIP:
Fr, 165 min
Released in 1963, Chris Marker’s Le joli Mai was one of the first and finest examples of cinema vérité to come out of France. Poetic, witty, complex, the film uses as its initial focus the spring of 1962, the first spring of peace for France since 1939. With rooftop shots of Paris on the screen, the narrator in the opening commentary tells us: “For two centuries happiness has been a new idea in Europe, and people are not used to it.” In the very political film which follows, Marker examines that idea of happiness on the small, private scale and on a larger, societal scale.
