Posts from — April 2008

Le texte ne commente pas plus les images que les images n’illustrent le texte. Ce sont deux séries de séquences à qui il arrive bien évidemment de se croiser et de se faire signe, mais qu’il serait inutilement fatigant d’essayer de confronter. Qu’on veuille donc bien les prendre dans le désordre, la simplicité et le dédoublement, comme il convient de prendre toutes choses au Japon.

– Chris Marker, “Avertissement au lecteur,” Le Dépays (Paris: Éditions Herscher, 1982)

{ “The text no more comments on the images than the images illustrate the text. They are two series of sequences that no doubt cross and signal each other, but that it would be unnecessarily tiring to try to confront directly. Please take them rather in their disorder, simplicity and mirroring, as it is advisable to take all things in Japan.” }

First Run / Icarus films has uploaded to YouTube this teaser for the new-to-DVD Chris Marker & Yannick Bellon film Remembrance of Things to Come. One feels, even in the first moments preceding the title, the lingering taste, the déjà vu of La Jetée in the b/w collage of living stills, and the déjà entendu of Sans Soleil in the unmistakable voice of Alexandra Stewart.

This is a draft of the virtual gallery in progress, which will replicate my Zurich exhibition on Second Life, the “filmmakers room”.

– Chris Marker (courtesy of Tom Luddy)

Up soon: Video of Guillaume as whirling dervish in Second Life. Don’t hold your breath; we’ve got to get the compression » decompression figured out…

Marker stuff is funny that way, we’ve become so used to the accessibility afforded by electronic consumer culture… it’s a shock when certain things are truly rare, whether in physical or even virtual form.

– markertext

Here’s the text from the back cover, filled to the brim with the inimitable style and signature of Chris Marker – sparkling wit, parody, irony and pure humour; literary and historical ricochets in all directions; and genre-bending meanderings – in short, not your average marketing pitch by a long shot. This may be one of the few or only places that Marker explicitly adopts (though not without reservation) the term “ciné-essai” for his general MO.

Coréennes doit s’entendre ici au sens de Gnossiennes ou Provinciales c’est’-à-dire “pièces d’inspiration coréenne”. On y trouvera, outre les dames de Corée (qui à elles seules vaudraient plus d’un long-métrage), des tortues qui rient, des géants qui pleurent, un légume qui rend immortel, trois petites filles changées en astres, un ours médecin, un chien qui mange la lune, un tambour qui fait danser des tigres, plusieurs chouettes, ct sur ce décor immortel un pays anéanti hier par la guerre, qui repousse “à la vitesse d’une plante au cinéma” entre Marx et les fées. Vous apprendrez encore que les Coréens ont inventé l’imprimerie avant Gutenberg, le cuirassé avant Potemkine et la Grand Garabagne avant Michaux, dans ce “court-métrage” où l’on souhaite voir apparaître un genre distinct de l’album et du reportage, qu’on appellerait faute de mieux ciné-essai comme il y a des ciné-romans — à une seule réserve près, mais d’importance: les personnages ne s’y expriment pas encore par de jolis phylactères en forme de nuage, comme dans les comics. Mais il faut savoir attendre…

Front and back covers to Chris Marker, Coréennes, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1959. Heartfelt thanks to markertext for these scans.

DIVERSIONS: A FESTIVAL OF EXPERIMENTAL FILM AND VIDEO | 8-11 MAY 2008 | FILMHOUSE, EDINBURGH

Cinétracts (Chris Marker et al, 1968, 16mm, 20′) 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. (LUX)

DIVERSIONS is a new festival of experimental film and video organised jointly by Filmhouse cinema and the Film Studies section of the University of Edinburgh. For more information see 1968.areachicago.org.

Photograph from Chris Marker, Staring Back, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007.

And also for this design of mine ’tis convenient for me to write at home, in a wild country, where I have nobody to assist or relieve me; where I hardly see a man who understands the Latin of his Pater noster, and of French as little, if not less. I might have it better elsewhere, but then the work would have been less my own; and its principal end and perfection is to be exactly mine. I readily correct an accidental error, of which I am full, as I run carelessly on; but for my ordinary and constant imperfections, it were a kind of treason to put them out. When another tells me, or that I say to myself, “Thou art too thick of figures: this is a word of Gascon growth: that is a dangerous phrase (I do not reject any of those that are used in the common streets of France; they who would fight custom with grammar are fools); this is an ignorant discourse: this is a paradoxical discourse; that is going too far: thou makest thyself too merry at times: men will think thou sayest a thing in good earnest which thou only speakest in jest.” “Yes,” say I, “but I correct the faults of inadvertence, not those of custom. Do I not talk at the same rate throughout? Do I not represent myself to the life? ‘Tis enough that I have done what I designed; all the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.”

- Michel de Montaigne, “Of Custom, and that we should not easily change a law received,” Essais, trans. Charles Cotton

Luc ne pouvait toujours pas se consoler du départ de Caliban. Mais de penser aux chats de la liberté le réconfortait. Peut-être, après tout, la révolution de velours avait-elle déjà commencé. Et si les chats n’allaient plus tout seuls? Et si des humains avaient enfin, trahissant clandestinement leur espèce, décidé de les aider? Et si les chats avaient accepté cette alliance? Et si Caliban avait décidé de les rejoindre? Cette idée, telle une mélodie intérieure imperceptible, lui donnait du coeur à l’ouvrage.

- François Maspero, “LES CHATS DE LA LILBERTÉ,” a story included as a separate booklet in Chats Perchés, un film de Chris Marker (DVD, arte video, 2004).

In some respects—not least his ability to be au courant while lost in the past—this legendary, unclassifiable filmmaker is the French analogue to sometime diarist Jonas Mekas. Elaborating on Marker’s interests, The Case of the Grinning Cat is preceded by his whimsical bestiary, composed of five short animal pieces—Cat Listening to Music, An Owl Is an Owl Is an Owl, Zoo Piece, Bullfight in Okinawa, and Slon Tango. The filmmaker, however, is the rarest bird of all.

- J. Hoberman, “Cat Power: Chris Marker and his feline friend document post–9-11 France,” villagevoice.com, December 12th, 2006.

For a summary of the Bestiary shorts, see this page on Icarus Films’ site.

Marker is far less impressed by the camera’s neutrality or its ability to record things whole. He loves imagery, but does not trust it. His essential influences – Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov – are filmmakers who explored montage (or editing) as a stimulus to argument. Pictures come to life if we are looking, thinking, testing; they demand definition, not just awed witness.

Above all, Mr. Marker sees that imagery has become a chief resort of our collective memory – but in a way that stresses our isolation as much as our involvement. To adapt the critic John Berger (another Markerian) a little: photographs evoke presence and absence at the same time. We are there, in the scene, yet cut off from it. It is the model for so much of modern experience – our amazing ability to acquire information usually depends on some distancing mechanism. We do not know things so much as pretend to know them.

- David Thomson, “Chris Marker: Already Living in Film’s Future,” nytimes.com, 2003

PAL DVD Release Date Set for April 24, 2008

Some preliminary information from amazon.fr:
Réalisateurs : Chris Marker
Format : PAL
Région: Région 2 (Ce DVD ne pourra probablement pas être visualisé en dehors de l’Europe)
Date de sortie du DVD : 24 avril 2008
ASIN: B0014GIZTM

You can now purchase the DVD at Arte Boutique. See comments for extra films included in this release. Arte summarizes Marker’s monumental film in this succinct soundbyte:

De Che Guevara à Rudi Dutschke, de Lénine à Mao, de Charonne à la rue Gay-Lussac, de Cuba à Santiago, Chris Marker retrace la montée puis la retombée des utopies révolutionnaires des années 60 et 70.

There is some more information and discussion on a wide variety of DVD-release topics in the Criterion forums. It is interesting how many of the members have CM avatars (a Guillaume among them). Hopefully some will contribute some musings to this blog before too long. Don’t be shy… Perhaps M. Marker himself posts or lurks there; given the cinephilia in evidence, palpable and breathable, we wouldn’t be surprised. All are disguised, all are welcome. Everything is hidden in plain sight.

«Remembrance of Things to Come» DVD Now Available

In the latest Wexner Center for the Arts eblast, a grinning cat announces the following:

For a limited time the Wexner Center Store is the exclusive retail home to Icarus Films’ latest DVD releases by the legendary filmmaker Chris Marker, including the new-to-shelves Remembrance of Things to Come. Click here to go to the Chris Marker Store, packed with DVDs, books, magazines, and more.