Posts from — April 2008

“Schon Alexandre Astrucs Vision von der Caméra-Stylo liegt der Gadanke zugrunde, Bilder schreiben zu können.”
- Christa Blümlinger

Schreiben Bilder Sprechen: Texte zum essayistischen Film

Hrsg. Christa Blümlinger und Constantin Wulff
Wein: Sonderzahl, 1992

CONTENTS:

I. Versuch als Form
Christa Blümlinger: Zwischen den Bilder/Lesen
Birgit Kämper: Sans Soleil – “ein Film erinnert sich selbst”
Raymond Bellour: Zwischen Sehen und Verstehen [Sechs Filme (en passant); "Der Brief sagt noch"]
Karl Sierek: Stimme Lotse auf der Reise Du
Martin Schaub: Filme als Briefe

II. Gespräche
Selbst-Bilder des Kinos
Praktische Filmkritik

III. Filmisches Denken
Frieda Grafe: Der bessere Dokumentarfilm, die gefundene Fiktion
Harun Farocki: Unregelmässig, nicht regellos
Thomas Tode: Demontage des definitiven Blicks
Bill Krohn: Welles: Fernsehen und der Essayfilm
Hartmut Bitomsky: Nanooks Lächeln

IV. Materialien
Hans Richter: Der Filmessay, Eine neue Form des Dokumentarfilms
Alexandre Astruc: Die Geburt einer neuen Avantgarde: die Kamera als Federhalter
André Bazin: Lettre de Sibérie
Edgar Reitz, Alexander Kluge, Wilfried Reinke: Wort und Film

“Il y a une énergie propre aux mots et une énergie propre aux images. Si vous les mêlez, elles se dévorent l’une l’autre, elles s’annulent.”
Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories II [37]

“Sur les deux faces temporelles, l’essai travaille en regard de l’absence, dans le souvenir ou l’anticipation de la perte.”
Jean Starobinski

EXHIBITION, MUSEUM OF DESIGN ZURICH
12 March – 29 June 2008

“This exhibition brings together for the first time several works by Chris Marker (b. 1921), one of the most high-profile figures of recent media history. While films such as La Jetée and Sans soleil are regarded as cinema classics, Marker’s intellectual curiosity has produced pioneering contributions in other fields: from the written word and photography to books, video, CD-Rom, and multimedia installations like Silent Movie, a work celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the cinematic medium. His works link language and image in a particularly haunting manner. Important themes for Marker such as memory and social commitment feature prominently in his latest work, Staring Back: powerful portraits of people over six decades, met by chance while traveling, or contemporary historical figures such as Simone Signoret, Akira Kurosawa, Salvador Dalí, or Fidel Castro. Marker’s shot selection reveals a characteristic interplay between the perspective of the observer and the observed.”

Marker & Alain Resnais Direct: Statues Also Die (Les Statues Meurent Aussi)

“This is a profoundly humanistic study of African art and its decline under colonialism, introducing two themes that have remained central in Marker’s work-the belief that all great human societies represent a victory over adversity and posit a view of man as potential ‘master of the world’; and the belief that such mastery is only possible if man is at one with the natural world. Marker believes that art should seek to ‘guarantee’ this harmony, as early African art does, rather than reflect its loss. This deeply felt film was banned by the censors as an attack on French colonialism, finally appearing ten years later in a truncated version.”
John Wakeman, World Film Directors

A film by Chris Marker, Alain Resnais. (1953, 21 mins, In French with written English synopsis, B&W, 16mm, Print from Cinémathèque Quebeçoise)

FRANCE / 1996 / French, Japanese / Color / 35mm / 106 min

Director, Photography: Chris Marker
Music: Michel Krasna
Cast: Catherine Belkhodja
Appearances: Oshima Nagisa and others
Producers: Anatole Dauman, Françoise Widhoff
Production Companies: Les Films de l’Astrophore, Argos Films
Source: Argos Films

“This documentary uses fiction to address shared memory of the Battle of Okinawa. Laura tries to get to the most difficult stage, level 5, of the computer program left behind by her late husband. In this are revealed statements by Rev. Kinjo Shigeaki, who witnessed the mass suicide at Tokashiki Island; documentary footage of people jumping to their deaths from cliffs on Saipan Island; and the image of a soldier who lost his memory due to the Battle of Okinawa, portrayed in John Houston’s film Let There Be Light, which was banned from public viewing for thirty years.”

Thanks to www.yidff.jp for this information.

LE SOUVENIR D’UN AVENIR
de Yannick Bellon et Chris Marker
2001, noir et blanc, 42 minutes (vidéo)

“Couleur du temps, couleur des jours, la moisson des photographies de Denise Bellon n’est rien d’autre, peut-être, qu’un passionnant journal, le journal d’une vie ouverte à son époque, de 1935 à 1955. Denise Bellon a fait partie, depuis sa création dans les années 30, de l’équipe de ” l’Alliance-Photo”, Agence photographique de presse.

Ses images ont été publiées en France et à l’étranger dans les grandes revues telles que ” Arts et métiers graphiques “, “Vu”, ” l’Illustration”, “Plaisir de France” et “Match”.

L’itinéraire de l’artiste emprunte constamment les chemins de la liberté. Sa règle d’or est la curiosité et l’attention donnée au monde. Un photographe est un voleur d’instants. Son Rolleiflex à la main, Denise Bellon ne cesse jamais d’aller à la rencontre de la vie, d’avoir rendez-vous avec des êtres, de capturer les beaux visages inconnus et les voisins célèbres, les flâneurs de la Seine, Prévert et sa bande, les ferrailleurs et Marcel Duchamp, André Masson ou Pierre Bonnard dans leurs ateliers.

Jour après jour, ce journal en images tisse la trame du temps : au hasard de la grand’ville, au rythme de l’Histoire, de l’Exposition Universelle de 1937 aux nuits de l’Occupation, des amis surréalistes à Auguste Lumière, d’un mariage gitan à Giono et Joë Bousquet, l’amitié et la découverte font la ronde.

Et en filigrane de ce témoignage d’une vie, on devine le sourire de celle qui sut tendre au temps le miroir d’une époque.”

Claude Roy

Voix : Pierre Arditi
Tissu sonore : Michel Krasna
Post production : Jean-François Naudon
Mixage : Florent Lavallée
Direction de production : Eric Le Roy
Une coproduction Les Films de l’Equinoxe, Arte France.

“Chris Marker has a brilliant mind and heart and appetite for life, and it’s a privilege to travel with him to whatever he chooses to remember and to evoke. He is one of cinema’s all time greats – the most important reflective or non-narrative filmmaker after Dziga Vertov.”
Susan Sontag

“Immemory is a contribution to the ars memoriae that, once experienced, will prove difficult to forget. Yet because of its multiple paths, its forking, hypertextual options, it cannot of course be experienced once, or in one way. It might be construed as a series of homages and constructed memory sites. At a particular level, or portal, it renders a homage to cinema that wonders simultaneously whether it also prefigures the death of cinema. It traces as well a variable journey through the images, the remnants and the revenants, the stillness and the dust. Immemory, finally, offers a tour of the musée imaginaire we inhabit over time, along with an evocative summation of the profoundly human concerns of Marker’s art. Might it not also be seen as a gently ironic reprise and reimag(in)ing of La Jetée? ”
Michael Palmer

“Admirers of the great photographer-filmmaker Chris Marker will find this haunting, alluring, sardonic and politically charged cybermuseum of geographical memory invaluable for exploring the threads, relations, transitions, juxtapositions of his life (as he cares to reveal it) and work.”
Susan Howe

Quotes culled from Exact Change English edition

“Vingt ans séparent La Jetée de Sans Soleil. Et encore vingt ans jusqu’à présent. Dans ces conditions, parler au nom de celui qui a fait ces films, ce n’est pas une interview, c’est du spiritisme.”

- Chris Marker [Samuel Douhaire, Annick Rivoiore, "Rare Marker," Libération 5 mars 2003]

AUTHOR: Christina Scherer
TITLE: Ivens, Marker, Godard, Jarman: Erinnerung im Essayfilm
PUBLISHER: Wilhelm Fink Verlag (München)
DATE: 2001

CONTENTS:

1. Einleitung
2. Teil I: Theoretische Zugänge zum Essayfilm
   1. Formen und Themen des Essayfilms
   2. (Hin-)Eingehen in die Geschichte der Bilder und Töne. Film/Medien, Gedächtnis und Erinnern
3. Teil II: Einzelanalysen
   1. Vom Umschreiben der (Lebens-)Geschichte: Joris Ivens
   2. Die Fremdheit des Erinnerns: Chris Marker
   3. “Ich sehe nicht.” Das Erinnerungsbild und das Unsichtbare: Jean-Luc Godard
   4. Erinnern, um zu erneuern: Derek Jarman
4. Teil III: Schluß
   1. Zummanfassung: Überlegungen zu einer Poetik des Essayfilms
   2. Literaturverzeichnis