Chris Marker
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Read Only Memory: Joanne McNeil on Chris Marker’s Immemory Project
“I’ll find you,” Chris Marker told Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang. The first time they met—New Year’s Day, 1999, at the Café de Flore in Paris—they had no idea what he looked like until he beckoned to them. There weren’t photos of him anywhere; he’d send illustrations of his cat, Guillaume-en-Égypte, if anyone asked for a picture. Krukowski and Yang wished to collaborate on an English language edition of the director’s CD-ROM project, Immemory. He could be difficult to reach but liked musicians and made time for the duo—formerly of Galaxie 500—who have performed as Damon & Naomi since 1991. […]
by Joanne McNeil on Jul 14, 2022 -
“I’ve Always Been Very Frustrated with Sports Films”: Julien Faraut on The Witches of the Orient, Learning from Chris Marker and Volleyball Anime
In his extraordinary portrait of American tennis champ John McEnroe, In the Realm of Perfection (2018), French filmmaker Julien Faraut engineered a hypnotizing meditation on the intersection between sports, performance and the creation of images—not at all the conventional retread of history one might expect from anything with the “sports movie” label. In his latest, The Witches of the Orient, Faraut returns to the arena of athletic competition in similarly idiosyncratic fashion, profiling the women of Japan’s most famous volleyball team. Made up of former textile workers, team “Nichibo Kaizuka” nabbed gold at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and inspired a […]
by Beatrice Loayza on Mar 31, 2021 -
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2019: “The Spying Thing”
In his introduction to “The Spying Thing,” a 20-title selection of espionage films that he curated with Gustavo Beck, long-time IFFR programmer Gerwin Tamsma goes back to the deep well of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) and finds in it a timely new metaphor. Jimmy Stewart’s wheelchair-bound peeping tom is now a 21st-century government or multinational corporation, collecting data from his neighbors without their knowledge or consent, constrained only by the length of his lens (technology) and by the walls of his apartment (the pesky rule of law that governs democracies and capital). Grace Kelly’s wealthy socialite, then, is the […]
by Darren Hughes on Apr 2, 2019 -
Pre-Course Work
With most incoming film students being required to make shorts during their undergraduate or graduate studies, what exemplars of the form should they look to for inspiration? Filmmaker asked a number of friends—all filmmakers—who teach filmmaking at a cross-section of institutions to list the short films they think all incoming students should check out and be inspired by. Howard A. Rodman, professor, USC School of Cinematic Arts: I consistently recommend to my students—whose films often lead with cinematography, visual effects and sound mix—that they see Andrea Arnold’s Academy Award–winning 2003 short film Wasp. Adequate direct sound, wobbly cam, minimalist VFX, yet […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jun 11, 2018 -
Chris Marker and the Image Industry
The idea for this essay first came to me during a GChat conversation with a friend a few weeks ago. We were discussing how my friend, whom I’ll call Martin, had recently met a young man over Grindr, an iPhone app that enables men to meet other men who are looking to hook up at present. Martin told me that after finding this particular young man (whom I’ll call Dave) on the service, Martin – armed with the knowledge of merely Dave’s first name, town of residence and what he looked like – was able to find Dave’s Facebook page, see […]
by Zachary Wigon on Sep 12, 2012 -
Filmmakers Also Die: Remembering Chris Marker
In Sans Soleil, a cine-essay from 1983 that feels like it’s from 2083 (and remains the paragon of the form), the narrator speaks of an idea for a film. This imaginary film would be about a man on our planet, from the year 4001 AD, who comes back in time to our era and is moved by the realization that in our time, people are capable of forgetting. You see, this time-traveler comes from a future where forgetting is impossible, where humans have figured out how to condition the brain to remember everything. In this future society, memories hold none […]
by Zachary Wigon on Jul 30, 2012 -
FAVORITE FILM FESTIVAL EVENT 2011: MEET THE MAKERS WITH STEVE JAMES
One of the best things about the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, which took place November 16th–27th, is how community-inclusive the fest is, with most activities, from interactive exhibitions to informal master classes, open to the public free of charge. (Indeed, it’s possible to get your cinephile fix on a daily basis without ever buying a movie ticket.) And one of this year’s truly informative events was a Meet the Makers discussion at the Escape Club on Rembrandtplein hosted by Canadian documentarian Peter Wintonick. IDFA guest Steve James, who was honored with a retrospective, was there that Saturday morning to […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 6, 2012 -
“I See No Difference Between the Two”: On Cinema’s Role in Society
by Zachary Wigon on Jan 24, 2011
“I see no difference between the two”: cinema’s role in society. By Zachary Wigon.
