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…

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…

"Who remembers all that? History throws its empty bottles out the window." ~ Narrator

This Chris Marker documentary has been called an "experimental essay-film." It takes the form of a personal travelogue, bringing together images from Japan and Guinea-Bissau, "two extreme poles of survival," along with scenes from Iceland, Cape Verde, Paris and San Francisco. The only discernible thread linking such diverse places is the mind and memory of the writer-director.

An ongoing narration gives meaning to the visual presentation in the form of supposed letters written by a male traveler -- a fictitious cameraman named Sandor Krasna. The letters are read by a female narrator -- Florence Delay in French or Alexandra Stewart in English -- and they address…

The film director, photographer and author Chris Marker, was always one of the strange birds in the french new wave, and even though he was active in the Left Bank Cinema movement, it's really just his 1962 short, La Jetée, that belongs to the movement's cornerstones. Marker experimented with different media forms, directed original documentaries and was so eclectic as an artist that it's hard to fully grasp his body of work.

Sans Soleil is one of his most celebrated works and it's certainly not hard to understand why when you watch it. The film is a dreamy and utterly poetic essay film about being, death and memory; a female narrator philosophizes about these topics as the camera shows depictions…

He is dead and gone, lady,
  He is dead and gone,
 At his head a grass-green turf,
  At his heels a stone.

before marker died, he had embraced technology unabashedly, releasing digital works like metrotopia on his youtube page, kosinki. the historical weight of endowed time leading not to cynicism or even heidegger's death (the end of all possibilities) but to a love of the continuity of things. the same technology that a generation of children embraced and forced into banality marker presented with such adoration, even if it was just prepackaged software transitions, a montage of photographed faces like we see here in sans soleil. often times we idealize creators, especially those at such inconceivable lengths to ourselves. communicating…