The first image he told me about was of three children on a road in Iceland, in 1965.

On my imaginary shelf of favorites Sans Soleil had always sat slightly out of view, clandestinely lingering in the shadows behind the other cinematic behemoths that had crafted the loftiest statures in my mind. It sat in an indeterminable repose as I time and time again avoided re-watching it, every time hesitating, wondering if this was truly the film I once had thought it to be. Being intimidated by my own inner-circle is just the kind of business I'm in, and baby, business is a-boomin'. Now, after a multitude of revisits, looking back on my imaginary shelf there are still those that…

When it comes to movies these days I really am spoiled by so little want. I mean, it's just so easy to get hold of most things, even if one has to resort to torrent sites like karagarga or other more obscure avenues. Rewatching Sans Soleil reminded me of when I would make almost daily trips to the library in downtown San Francisco and bring home anything on DVD or VHS that looked interesting or that I'd heard about from friends on livejournal or whatever, often browsing a selection of the same old titles, yet anxious to see if perhaps anything new had been returned and not already picked out by another in the constantly ravenous swarm of movie fiends.…

Like any decently-educated cinephile, I was saddened at the passing of filmmaker Chris Marker in 2012. Having only seen La jetee by that time, I grieved based on how insanely original I found that film to be, and it further inspired me to seek out his other work to pay tribute. Well, as all of us cinephiles who vow to watch a canonical filmmaker's filmography can most likely sympathize, things in my life got in the way and that idea was derailed, replaced by other distractions or duties.

It wasn't until I purchased the discounted Criterion Blu-ray containing Marker's two greatest works that my goal was reinstated. I watched La jetee again, loving it even more, and then I moved…

Since I was incredibly young, images have always meant a lot to me. My family were never artistic, my dad was a welder and my mum worked in retail, however I came to terms very quickly with the fact that I loved movies. Of course, I didn’t yet think about what these images truly meant, I was three or four years old, yet something leapt out of the screen at me consistently. I stuck with the most mainstream of cinema throughout the majority of my childhood, but there were a few times that I unintentionally stumbled across some other films. 

I’d love to be able to relay a beautiful, romantic story of how I fell in love with cinema, something…

The Ultimate Challenge - Film #1
Added to: People-being-People List
Added to: .mpr.ss..n.sm .n F.lm

If I were to describe Chris Markers Sans Soleil I'd be at loss for words. This film is an essay, sure, but one that doesn't just display it's subject but embraces it to the fullest with a poetic integrity that's almost unheard of in the documentary field. Works that come closest to this, would be the equally challenging Qatsi-trilogy but even that comparison has some loose ends. Marker has taken footage that could as well be a simple holiday-video but excelled it by placing it into a peculiar docufiction environment with the help of a near melancholic voice-over.

As the sweet french voice reads the…

“I remember that month of January in Tokyo. Or rather, I remember the images I filmed of the month of January in Tokyo. They have substituted themselves for my memory. They are my memory. I wonder how people remember things who don’t film, don’t photograph, don’t tape. How has mankind managed to remember?”

This is a lot of why I used to write and why I’m trying to write again now I suppose. Memory is temporary at best, and fallible at worst - once we have passed through an event we’ll never be able to recall it exactly as it was. I’m not very good at talking about why I like things, but I like this film. I’ve always been…

Poetry. Global amnesia. A temple consecrated to cats. The killing of a giraffe. The dead that cross islands in their journey to the afterlife. Pac-Man. A lighthouse off Cape Verde. Kamikaze pilots. Suicide. The gaze, in one twenty-fourth of a second, of a human face. Street performers. Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The year 4001, when Modest Mussorgsky hasn’t been forgotten. No one truly remembers. A time, a place. Sunless.

Indescribable, magical, unforgettable — Sans Soleil, Chris Marker’s unflinchingly beautiful film, is a documentary on and of transcendence, an essay travelogue experiences first-hand by a traveler lost in his own thoughts, perspectives, and forgetfulness. There isn’t a plot to it: a female narrator, Alexandra Stewart in the English version, narrates letters written to…