No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Chris Marker: Memories of the Future
Abstract
Chris Marker is one of the most extraordinary and influential filmmakers of our time. In landmark films such as Letter from Siberia, La Jetée, Sans Soleil, and Level Five, he has overturned cinematic conventions by confounding the distinction between documentary and fiction, writing and visual recording, and the still and moving image. Yet these works are only the tip of the iceberg; Marker's career has also encompassed writing, photography, television, and digital multimedia. Chris Marker is the first systematic examination of Marker's complete oeuvre. Here, Catherine Lupton traces the development and transformation of the artist's work from the late 1940s, when he began to work as a poet, novelist, and critic for the French journal Esprit, through the 1990s and the release of his most recent works, including Level Five and the CD-ROM Immemory. Lupton explicates Marker's work as a circular trajectory, with each project recycling and referring back to earlier works as well as to a host of adopted texts, always proceeding by oblique association and lateral digression. This trajectory, which Lupton outlines with great care and precision, is critical to understanding Marker's abiding obsession: the forms and operations of human memory. With this theme as her architecture, Lupton presents the most comprehensive and incisive analysis of Marker to date. Incorporating historical events and cultural contexts that have informed each phase of Marker's career, Lupton gives readers access to an artist who stands outside of the mainstream and thus defies easy explanation. There is no better guide than Lupton's to this modern master's prolific and multidimensional career.
... Para Chris Marker (pseudônimo de Christian Bouche-Villeneuve), a literatura foi uma de suas origens artísticas, tendo ele escrito romances e se dedicado, entre 1954 e 1958, a fazer guias de viagem fora dos padrões, a coleção Petite Planète da editora Seuil 6 , com o objetivo, o "desejo de ver e mostrar o mundo de ângulos inesperados" (Lupton, 2005: 40) e fazendo uma "nova aliança entre texto e imagem", em que a fotografia é complemento simbiótico e indispensável do texto. Vários de seus documentários podem ser considerados travelogues, como já o primeiro filme, Olympia 52 (realizado em Helsinki, durante os Jogos Olímpicos de 1952), sendo alguns bastante inusitados, como Carta da Sibéria (1958) e Se eu tivesse quatro dromedários (1966), além daqueles feitos na China (Dimanche à Pékin), em Israel (Description d'un combat, 1960), em Cuba (Cuba sí, 1961) e no Japão (O mistério Koumiko, 1965, e Sans Soleil, 1983. ...
... Seus filmes tinham não só imagens em movimento, como fotografias (caso de Se eu tivesse quatro dromedários e do conhecido filme de ficção La jetée) e Marker posteriormente utilizou as novas tecnologias que surgiam, como o vídeo. Seus comentários over, que foram publicados com o título Commentaires, tornam clara a sua relação com a arte literária -Carta da Sibéria começa de maneira epistolar (gênero bastante presente na literatura): "Je vous écris d'un pays lointain" 7 -e tinham um estilo bem característico (com enumerações, jogos de palavras, associações curiosas etc), perceptível mesmo em filmes de outros diretores para quem escreveu ou colaborou, caso de Noite e neblina (1953), filme em que recebeu o crédito de co-diretor, junto com Alain Resnais 8 (Lupton, 2005). ...
... 8. Lupton (2005) observa que Jean Cayrol, sobrevivente dos campos e responsável pelo comentário over do filme, recebeu a colaboração de Marker. Percebemos a retórica do cineasta pela enumeração de "estilos" das torres de vigilância dos campos. ...
We analyze essay documentaries by Chris Marker and Agnès Varda from the time of the Nouvelle Vague which have predominance of voice over and use of preexisting music, especially Letter from Siberia (Marker, 1958) and Elsa la Rose (Varda, 1965), and in which we investigate the relationship between those elements and between them and the images. In those films, the voice over is a sign of modernity and the preexisting music is part of a musical collage. Both sound elements relate often ironically to the images.
... Marker apud Lupton, 2005, p. 153).8 No filme a memória é indissociável do dispositivo que a registra.ParaLupton (2005), a montagem das imagens e do som nesse filme é construída como uma consciência reflexiva. Por meio dessa montagem Marker cria o que a autora caracteriza como uma meditação sobre tempo, espaço, memória, história e representação. ...
... De acordo com CatherineLupton (2005), Marker publicou um romance em 1949: "Le coeur net" e, além disso, escreveu poesias, contos e ensaios politicos e culturais para a revista Esprit, uma publicação francesa intelectualizada, fundada em 1932. ...
O presente artigo propõe um percurso pela cinematografia de Chris Marker, desde 1962 até 1998, buscando perceber como a militância atravessa a obra, mas, ao mesmo tempo, como o diretor reelabora seu engajamento através da montagem e do trabalho ensaístico. A relação entre montagem e militância é marcada pelas quatro versões de O fundo do ar é vermelho – 1977/88/93/98 – passando por Le joli mai (1962), Sem Sol (1983), Elegia a Alaexandre (1992) e Level five (1995).
... The obligation of amity remains strong in Palermitans' consciousness because it is tied to tastes and smells xiv . Food consumption is a composite of action, emotion and memory (Sutton 2001, Lupton 2005. Food can make individuals recall situations and feelings, but food has also another function, that of attaching smells and tastes to new experiences (Seremetakis 1994). ...
... Palermo, 10-15 luglio 2005. xiv Seremetakis (1994), Counihan (1999), and Lupton (2005) among others discuss the relationship between food and memory. They suggest that food consumption stimulates all the senses and as a result smells, tastes, feelings and images relevant to this experience are stronger in the individuals' memory. ...
... De acordo com CatherineLupton (2005), Marker publicou um romance em 1949: "Le coeur net" e, além disso, escreveu poesias, contos e ensaios politicos e culturais para a revista Esprit, uma publicação francesa intelectualizada, fundada em 1932. ...
Dossiê da revista Esferas sobre autoria no documentário.
... Herein lies movement: through the time and distance covered by the connection between Medvedkin and Marker, whose shared interest was in cinema as resistance. Marker's artistic inclinations coincided with his political awakening when he became a member of the left-wing cultural organization Travail et Culture (Lupton, 2005). Armed with whatever technology available at the moment, he documented unrest-from the protests in France in the 1960s to the farmers' revolt against the usurpation of their lands for the construction of the Narita International Airport in the 1980s, as well as the many other spaces in between and after (Alter, 2006). ...
Published in the official catalogue of the Daang Dokyu, a festival of Philippine documentaries launched in 2020.
... Centre Pompidou. Catherine Lupton de entender Zapping Zone como "entidad física" (Lupton, 2006). Debe señalarse, por otro lado, que a pesar de la disposición lineal según las exigencias del formato y de aparecer ordenadas numéricamente, las distintas notas han sido elaboradas autónomamente sin atender a ninguna clase de lógica de conjunto. ...
Política de los recuerdos y los olvidos. Zapping Zone una instalación de Chris MarkerRESUMENChris Marker es autor de una extensa obra audiovisual, a través de la cual trata de hallar una política de la forma capaz de constituir las imágenes como memoria colectiva. Su trayectoria artística está marcada por una intensa experimentación técnica y estilística en torno a la imagen audiovisual. Esta experimentación le conducirá a romper constantemente los moldes, llevando su propia expresión más allá de la inflexibilidad de las tradiciones y las disciplinas. Este ensayo regresa concretamente sobre un proyecto tardío, su instalación interactiva Zapping Zone, para analizar las técnicas de ensamblaje y las tácticas empleadas respecto al visitante de la instalación. La obra es un buen ejemplo de un personalísimo trabajo centrado en la escritura de la historia y en los procesos de la memoria colectiva. En ella, Marker no trata de imitar o reproducir los mecanismos individuales y sociales, sino justamente de crear las condiciones técnicas y estéticas para la producción de nuevas formas de recuerdo y olvido.PALABRAS CLAVEArte contemporáneo, audiovisual, memoria, técnicas de montaje, olvido, Zapping ZonePOLICY OF RECALLING AND FORGETFULNESS. ZAPPING ZONE A CHRIS MARKER’S INSTALLATIONABSTRACTChris Marker is the author of an extensive visual artwork in which he intends to develop a politic of shape able to construct images as collective memories. The author’s artistic trajectory is considerably influenced by an intense technical and esthetic experimentation related to audiovisual image. The experimentation technique allows the author to constantly break traditions providing the chance to place his artwork at an upper level, exceeding the inflexibility of tradition and discipline. This essay takes a retrospective look at a late project, its interactive installation Zapping Zone with the purpose of analyzing the assembly and the used tactics regarding visitors who attend to the installation. This work is a good example of an outstanding devoted concern to history of writing and processes of collective memory. Marker not only pretends to imitate or reproduce social and individual mechanisms, but also attempts to create technical and esthetic conditions as new options for forgetting and recalling.KEY WORDSContemporary art, audiovisual, recalling, mounting technique, forgetfulness, Zapping Zone.IUIARISPA KUNGARISKAmANDA zAPPING zONE CHURASKAKUNA SUTI CHIS MARKERMAILLALACHISKASug iaha runa suti Chis Marker kawachikame sug, rurai chipi munakume kawachingapa tukuipa iuiakuna kai runa kami ajai racha unai kaipi trabajaska iachami allilla chimanda mailla maillla allichispa ringapa suma kidangami churangapami kankuna sug rurai kaawngapa allillachu kudaku suti Zapping Zone allichispa tukuikuna kawangapa. Kaipi iuiarispa ñugpamnda kawachinaku Kai kilkaipi ruraka runa suti Marker, mana kungarringapa iuiaikuna kaugsakangapa.RIMANGAPA MINISTISKAKUNA Ñugamanda rurai, kawachispa, iuiai, allilla churangapa, kungarri Zapping Zone.POLITIQUE DES SOUVENIRS ET DE CE QU’ON OUBLIE. ZAPPING ZONE UNE INSTALLATION À CHRIS MARKER RÉSUMÉChris Marker c’est un auteur d’une grande œuvre audiovisuelle, à travers laquelle il essaie de trouver une politique capable de constituer les images comme mémoire collective. Son parcours artistique est marqué pour une intense expérimentation technique autour l’image audiovisuelle. Cette expérimentation lui fait rompre régulièrement les schémas, en emmenant sa propre expression au-delà des inflexions des traditions et des disciplines. Cet essai retourne directement sur un projet tardif ; proprement de son installation Zapping Zone, pour analyser les techniques d’assemblage et tactiques utilisées vis au visiteur du montage. L’œuvre est un exemple parfait du travail personnel centré dans l’écriture de l’histoire et dans les processus de la mémoire commune. Dans celle-ci, MARKER n’essaie pas d’imiter ou reproduire les mécanismes soient individuels ou sociaux, par contre de créer les conditions techniques et esthétiques pour la production de nouvelles formes de souvenir et d’oubli.MOTS CLÉSArt contemporain, audiovisuel, mémoire, techniques de montage, oubli, Zapping Zone.
... Sans soleil/Sunless (Chris Marker, 1983) is an essential film in cinema history in general and European cinema in particular, as many authors have analysed it (Bellour 1999;Lemaître 2002;Lupton 2004Lupton , 2005Russell 2008; Montero 2014; Jacques 2018, among many others). Besides, Marker's film is, without a doubt, one of the greatest exponents of the essay film, and as such it has also been the object of multiple studies from different perspectives (Kampër and Tode 1997;Blümlinger 2004;Rascaroli 2009;Corrigan 2011;Montero 2012;Català 2014;Alter 2006Alter , 2018. ...
The essay film is defined by its capability to embody an audiovisual thinking process. Chris Marker’s Sans soleil/Sunless (1983) is undoubtedly one of the highest expressions of this filmic form, which reflects on postmodernity through the nature of images. This article aims to analyse the thinking in act of the film, using Jacques Rancière’s concept of sentence-image, and applying Gilles Deleuze’s theory of the time-image and the crystal-image. The cinematic thinking process forces the spectator to constantly transform the actual image/virtual image relationship of the film until it reaches a time-image and crystal-image of postmodernity. It is possible thanks to the shifts among the different subjectivities created by Marker and the interstices they generate. This shift also reaches a crystal-image as a materialisation of the postmodern concept of alterity as analysed by Paul Ricœur and Zygmunt Bauman. The reflection is constructed by means of an itinerary through four types of images and their screens – film image, television image, electronic image and video game image – in order to develop the image-memory-history axis and to generate an audiovisual reflection on postmodernity in total consonance with Jean Baudrillard’s theory of the image, Marc Augé’s of non-places and Fredric Jameson’s of the postmodern historicism.
... Por outro lado, a montagem atravessa a dialética pela série paratática -inventário de rostos, gestos e "motivos" -que, em sua dimensão marcadamente patética, modula o filme por meio dos afetos da luta e do luto. De um lado, portanto, a natureza sempre contraditória 3 É preciso reconhecer, há uma vasta literatura em torno da obra de Chris Marker, como livros que recuperam a trajetória do diretor, do início da carreira até os últimos filmes, tais como Alter (2006) e Lupton (2005). Há, ainda, artigos dedicados especificamente ao filme, como Baecque (2008), Casanova (2013), Fairfaix (2012) e Giraud (2013). ...
Muito se pode dizer sobre O fundo do ar é vermelho, de Chris Marker, filme inesgotável, que se dedica a um impressionante acervo de imagens de nossa história recente. Acervo que somente em parte (sua ponta visível) veio à tona e cuja outra parte, submersa, interessa a Marker retomar. Em nossa hipótese, trata-se, por um lado, de prosseguir com a tradição dialética que produz choques, contradições entre imagens e testemunhos, levando-os sempre em direção a uma polifonia. Por outro lado, a montagem atravessa a dialética pela série paratática – inventário de rostos, gestos e “motivos” – que, em sua dimensão marcadamente patética, modula o filme por meio dos afetos da luta e do luto.
... At the same time, however, the work's particular labyrinthine interface design, through which the user should repeat her ambulatory navigation in order to establish different associations between the materials, undermines both a voluntary recollection and a stable preservation of her trajectory, therefore stressing that her memory work is technologically mediated and thus not immune to fragmentation, digression, and oblivion. As Catherine Lupton (2005) notes, the experience of navigating Immemory is precisely like rummaging through a virtual attic of stored treasures, time in suspension as you become absorbed in poring over the random, forgotten mementos of the past that rise to the surface as you delve through with your hands. (p. ...
Can digital platforms such as the database and the virtual museum offer new possibilities of the archive? What concept of the archive can be pursued by contemporary practices that are appropriate and explore the digital forms in order to engage with the radical transformation of the experience and memory of older arts and media? This article seeks to address these questions by investigating Ouvroir (2008), a Second Life virtual museum created by Chris Marker. The author argues that Marker’s model of the virtual museum allows for the dialectic of the archive as marked by both new possibilities for documentation and memory and its inherent room for loss, fragmentation, and disorientation. This dialectical concept of the archive challenges not simply the traditional concept of the archive that presumes the totality of preservation and the systematic classification of information but also the utopian account of the virtual museum or archive, according to which its simulation, free accessibility, and universal connectivity contribute to overcome the physical museum or archive.
... A collection of her papers appears in French in Bracha Ettinger (2000b). 4. I wrote this article before the publication of several key works on Marker that should now be acknowledged as making contributions to the analysis of this major filmmaker and this film (Kear, 2002; Lupton, 2005. See also Kear, 1999). ...
Drawing on Cathy Caruth’s reading of trauma in Lacan’s interpretation of the burning child dream in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, this article offers a feminist response to Jean-Louis Schefer’s study of Chris Marker’s canonical film on time and memory: La Jetée. The question of the trauma of life and awakening is shifted by a non-phallic, matrixial reading that attends to a haunting sense of presence. One vision sees the subject as traumatically quickened to a living that is forever haunted by what it cannot remember, trapped into a return that will take it forward to its death. A different vision senses some supplementary dimensions of the subject that is never a purely solitary One, outcast from an originary unity, but is co-emergent, traumatically (as any encounter with the real must be) in tune with, and witness to, all the burdens and hurts of the Other that must be shared. The article suggests, therefore, that the grace of this deeply fetishistic, psychically masculine film, nonetheless, lies at a psychic level only just emerging into theorization on the far border of Lacan’s poetic revision of psychoanalysis through the feminist attentiveness to, and desire to know of, a sexual difference in, of and from the feminine.
Przedmiotem niniejszego artykułu jest charakterystyka szczególnej odmiany filmów, których struktura narracyjna została oparta w całości lub w dominującym stopniu na statycznym materiale fotograficznym. Utwory określane jako filmy ze zdjęć, fotofilmy czy „opowieści fotograficzne” nie doczekały się dotąd zbyt wielu opracowań ujmujących zjawisko w sposób kompleksowy. Brak usystematyzowania terminologicznego prowokuje do refleksji naukowej nie tylko nad konkretnymi dziełami, ale również nad ich miejscem wśród istniejących klasyfikacji gatunkowych. Oryginalność poetyki fotofilmów została przedstawiona w zestawieniu z filmem ikonograficznym, animacją i found footage, z którymi wykazuje podobieństwa formalne; gatunki te mają wspólną historię. Rozważania teoretyczne wspiera analiza wybranych fotofilmów z kina polskiego i zagranicznego.
The displacement from the essay film to the video installation has in Chris Marker one of its first and most relevant figures. The comparative study of Zapping Zone. Proposal for an imaginary television (1990) and Level Five (1997) allows for the analysis of the construction and complexification, and the deconstruction and saturation processes that take place between the most complex expression of the Markerian essay film and its transformation into the video installation. Zapping Zone responds to the embodiment of both the magmatic stage of the postmodern audiovisual era and the starting point of the filmmaker's work (documentaries, essay films, video installations, etc.), which would be the opposite of the writer’s blank page: a saturated world of images that needs to be selected, analysed and worked on in order to build meaning. Level Five offers the filmmaker’s reflection on that same reality, applied to the Battle of Okinawa, through a complex audiovisual thinking process that hybridises different types of images—documentary and fictional; analogue and electronic—devices—epistolary video diary, video game and cyberspace—and their authorial subjectivities—Laura, Laura’s lover and Chris—in order to reflect on the relationship between these audiovisual forms and spaces and the thematic axis memory-pain-oblivion.
Previous scholarship focusing on Chris Marker’s involvement with social movements tends to overlook the inextricability of social and environmental concerns and to position the 1980s as a return for Marker to personal filmmaking. This article seeks to recontextualise Marker’s work from Japan during this period to reveal the continuity of earlier preoccupations with social movements and planetary concerns. It draws on Félix Guattari’s notions of ecosophy and the three ecologies in an analysis of the train motif in several of Marker’s multimedia works. The analysis elucidates an ecological consciousness facilitated by the train in work such as Sans soleil (1982), its photo-textual companion Le Dépays (1982) and the photography exhibit and book Passengers (2011) as well as a search in these works for new forms of collectivity. Finally, the article draws on archival material to reveal previously unknown connections between Michel Butor, Marker, the train and the genesis of Le Dépays.
Through analysis of works by Chris Marker and Frédéric Boyer, this study considers the inextricability of place and time in the constitution of environment. Both authors offer attempts to see environment in its spatiotemporal fullness through what I call a poetics of space-time. In Marker’s film Sans soleil (1983), various geographic and virtual spaces are juxtaposed through their differing temporal dimensions; they form a matrix that is regulated by globalization, mediated by technology, tradition and, most significantly, time. This heterogenous quality of contemporaneity de-centers representations of the earth based upon place. Boyer assesses the ethical and political consequences of these temporal considerations in Quelle terreur en nous ne veut pas finir ? (2015), an essay that emphasizes how subjective unawareness of questions of time and their relation to questions of space contributes to the most menacing problems facing humanity. From these works, I conclude that thinking about how time structures space is necessary for more adequately representing and understanding the earth.
“Le plus célèbre des cinéastes inconnus”: this is how Philippe Dubois (5) describes the mysterious figure of Chris Marker, the French filmmaker recently deceased and celebrated in 2014 with a solo exhibition held at the London Whitechapel Gallery. Marker died on 29 July 2012, at the considerable age of 91, and yet his loss has left a feeling of emptiness in the world of cinema and among his admirers. Perhaps this is because during his life the director was always surrounded by an aura of mystery. Marker always looked for anonymity, resisting the exposition of his personal image. His biographical data, along with his real name (Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve) and the date and place of his birth, are confusing and sometimes contradictory. It is thus possible to talk of a “mystère Marker”, with reference both to the filmmaker’s tendency towards invisibility and to a sort of corresponding silence about him from the critics (Perniola 10).
Postcards are prominent throughout Varda's oeuvre and she has displayed parts of her postcard collections on several occasions in her films and video installations. Her movie in which postcards play the most important narrative role is One Sings, the Other Doesn't (1976). As researchers in the field of postcard studies have pointed out, postcards are not only a means of communication, but also a sign of life or a confirmation of friendship, as well as a souvenir or a gift. The objective of this article is to reflect on how the self-contained episodes in some of Varda's later non-fiction films, The Gleaners and I… Two Years Later (2002) and her five-part documentary Agnes Varda: From Here to There (2008-2011), can be regarded as a sign of friendship or as souvenir. And last but not least, whether and in what way could one also appreciate Varda's films as a gift.
Chris Marker and Pierre Lhomme’s Le Joli mai documents Paris in May 1962 – the first month of peace after the Evian agreements brought a conclusion to the Algerian War. It is a film that is often discussed in relation to its importance as a sociological text and for its artistic value. Yet, its importance as a milestone in the history of French film sound design remains to be explored. This article will consider how emerging technologies shaped the production process of Le Joli mai, where sonic considerations often led decision making about the images in a reversal of the conventional image-sound hierarchy. While the film employs a score by Michel Legrand and the voice of Yves Montand, smooth integration of the soundscape is destabilised due to the desire to capture real-world sounds and atmosphere. The article situates Le Joli mai at the nexus of sonic tradition and innovation, considering the film in relation to documentary sound, song in French cinema and the innovations of contemporary New Wave film. It argues that Le Joli mai presents a model of French film sound design that reflected social disruption sonically and paralleled ongoing polemics of early 1960s France.
Real revolutions, those that transform the lived structure of everyday existence, create their own time. New Wave and Rive Gauche films first invent a new kind of non-linear, disruptive temporality that then allowed a revolution, May ’68 in France. Evidence of this new time and new kind of future can be found in films from the era, notably in Godard’s À bout de souffle, and Resnais’ L’Année dernière à Marienbad. The 1968-era ciné-tracts, anonymous productions to which Marker and Godard greatly contributed, are examined as evidence of influence of the New Wave on May ’68, and as encouraging the spread of a collective and unconventional model of filmmaking.
Reconocido como uno de los ejemplos más representativos del film-ensayo, el cine de Chris Marker trató insistente-mente el papel de la imagen en la conflictiva relación del ser humano con la memoria. Desde esta perspectiva, el presente artículo trata de arrojar luz sobre su último largometraje, Level Five (1996), donde Marker actualiza anteriores planteamientos focalizando su reflexión cinematográfica en las consecuencias de la irrupción de las modernas tecno-logías de comunicación y las imágenes digitales en el enfrentamiento con el pasado traumático.
Special issue of "Image and Narrative", vol. 11, nr. 1, 2010. With contributions by Peter Kravanja (introduction), Christa Blümlinger, Sarah Cooper, Matthias De Groof, Sylvain Dreyer, Sarah French, Adrian Martin and Susana S. Martins
Special issue of "Image and Narrative", vol. 10, nr. 3, 2009. With contributions by Peter Kravanja (introduction), David Foster, Thibaut Garcia, Nicolas Geneix, Barbara Laborde, Suzanne Liandrat-Guigues and Luc Vancheri.
Este artigo é dedicado a analisar a relação entre memória, história e imagem em "La jetée", de Chris Marker, voltando-se, principalmente, para sua concepção estética, mise en scène, investigando de que forma essas questões constituem a obra e como ela informa e é informada pelo debate contemporâneo sobre esses temas.
At the nexus between audio-visual production and theoretical research, this article is based on the experience of producing a documentary on the history of a cement plant in Colombia: La Siberia. The tensions between the narratives constructed in the documentary and the immensity of the discarded archives from the plant drive a theoretical quest to respond to its own iconoclast and the post-structuralist critique of history. This brought us to the formulation of the concept of claroscura representation, defined as representation that is transparent about its own limitations. I put this concept to the test through the medium of documentary film, talking specifically about the making of La Siberia, and suggest its relevance in other projects that attempt to represent the past or history through film. I suggest that this theory drives us towards the formulation of a new artistic project. The research process, and the dialogue between theory and practice, is interpreted using the model of abduction proposed by Charles Sanders Peirce.
This paper provides an introduction to and an appreciation of the Left Bank Group of French filmmakers: Agnes Varda, Chris Marker and Alain Resnais. Working at the same time as the French New Wave filmmakers (Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette), The Left Bank Group have either been overshadowed by, or considered a minor sub-set of, their much more famous contemporaries. However, the films of the Left Bank Group are intellectually, politically, and aesthetically demanding, and, as this article argues, should be understood as a group in their own right, rather than as a lesser cousin of the French New Wave.
To structure the diverse and complex issues characterizing the Osogbo art movement, this chapter is organized into three parts. The first part explains different forms of colonial iconoclasm. The second part focuses on attempts to replenish the artistic void caused by colonial iconoclasm with the intentional creation of ?new images.? The final part discusses the effect of these images in terms of the emergence of a viable heritage industry that has turned the Osun grove and festival into one of Nigeria's biggest tourist attractions. As much as this development has prompted concerns about the commercialization and commodification of Yoruba art and religion, one should be careful, however, not to jump to modernist conclusions and reject Osogbo art as a kind of heritage kitsch. The chapter presents an argument that heritage is part of the story of African modernism and should not be viewed as evidence of the failure of modernism.
Against the backdrop of theories and practices of essayistic and first-person filmmaking, increasingly central today to documentary film and video production worldwide, this chapter charts the birth and evolution of a self-reflexive, intellectual, autobiographical, nonfictional cinema in Italy. Paying attention to the peculiarities of documentary production and distribution systems in the country since the early postwar era, it explores the emergence and development of ideas of essayistic cinema, starting with the visionary theories of Cesare Zavattini developed since the 1930s, moving to the thinking cinema of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Roberto Rossellini's didactic television, and concluding with contemporary manifestations of the essayistic impulse in the digital age.
This article analyzes the presence of a dialogic principle in the way subjectivities are constructed within Chris Marker’s Level Five, with a view to critically counteract the notion of Marker’s films as forms of the self-portrait. Through the Bakhtinian concept of “ideological becoming”, special attention is paid to the role played by new technologies of information and communication in the processes of re- accentuation which determine how subjectivities evolve in the context of the film. The concept of an “image-network” attempts to highlight the development of a new passage of the image towards a mode of representation dominated by a principle of exchange, whose importance is echoed in the film through the analysis of issues ranging from the dichotomy between memory and history to the relevance of documentary image for reality construction.
Este artigo é uma reflexão sobre o tempo, o cinema e o tempo do cinema, se apoiando na obra de Chris Marker, mais particularmente de seu famoso curta-metragem La Jetée. Para tal análise, articularei o conceito imagem-tempo do filósofo francês Gilles Deleuze com o filme de Marker. Nesse sentido, espera-se esmiuçar o filme francês, seus métodos e história, para provocar uma reflexão incisiva sobre o tempo cinematográfico e a relação particular do sujeito com o tempo.
This article considers a selection of Chris Marker's films in the context of noted differences between Emmanuel Levinas's and Jacques Derrida's positions on the animal as Other, the potential for the animal face. Derrida (2008) himself argues that Levinas ‘did not make the animal anything like a focus of interrogation within his work’ (p. 105). Statements such as this about Levinas's ethics seem to make his position clear. In contrast, Derrida's thinking on the matter of the animal, and in particular human responsibility for them as Other, stands as a thorough and influential body of ethical thought, probing the limited and limiting boundary between human and animal. His autobiographical texts, according to Lynn Turner (2015 , p. 135), welcome animal others. Marker's images, I will argue, address an equity between species through what he refers to as the égalité du regard, an equality in the gaze (of the camera). These images speak to a space beyond themselves and it is within this territory, I will argue, that the animal does have a face, that can occur via that of the human.
Powerfully posing questions of ethics, ideology, authorship and form, documentary film has never been more popular than it is today. Edited by one of the leading British authorities in the field, The Documentary Film Book is an essential guide to current thinking on documentary film.
In a series of fascinating essays, key international experts discuss the theory of documentary, outline current understandings of its history (from pre-Flaherty to the post-Griersonian world of digital 'i-Docs'), survey documentary production (from Africa to Europe, and from the Americas to Asia), consider documentaries by marginalised minority communities, and assess its contribution to other disciplines and arts. Brought together here in one volume, these scholars offer compelling evidence as to why, over the last few decades, documentary has come to the centre of screen studies.
Through a consideration of the archive as a site of consignation that, following Jacques Derrida, sits at the interface of technologies of inscription and the psychology of memory, the chapter questions the potential of rememoration afforded by the filmic archival trace as affect and emotion. The chapter focuses on the works of artists and filmmakers Lutz Becker, Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, Harun Farocki, and Eyal Sivan, whose practice variously re-montages and remediates archival film footage to question the repressed and unremembered traces within the archive of the contested histories of fascism, colonialism and the Holocaust soliciting a reflection on their enduring presence at the boundaries of cultural and transcultural articulations of memory and history.
!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 21 false false false NL-BE X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <!--[if gte mso 9]> Abstract (E): This paper examines Chris Marker’s film Sans Soleil in relation to Jean-François Lyotard’s theory of the sublime. Through an analysis of the film’s representation of memory, time and temporality it will argue that Marker’s film effectively “invokes the unpresentable in presentation itself” (Lyotard, 1992: 15).
Abstract (F): Cet article examine le film Sans Soleil de Chris Marker en relation avec la théorie du sublime de Jean-François Lyotard. À travers une analyse de la représentation de la mémoire, du temps et de la temporalité du film, il soutient que le film de Marker invoque d’une manière effective “l’irreprésentable dans la représentation même” (Lyotard, 1992: 15). </p
Abstract (E): Using "micrology", as set out by Adorno in Negative Dialectics, this paper tries to
characterize a central feature of Chris Marker's approach, as iconographer and writer, namely the way
in which he explores the echoes of history and culture in the singularity and rarity of the documentary.
As traveller and photographer he catches and collects microcosmic fragments, tying them up and
editing them in the various frames of the book, the film or the new media.
Abstract (F): En s'appuyant sur la "micrologie" proposée par Adorno dans la Dialectique négative,
cet article tente de caractériser un aspect de la démarche de Chris Marker, iconographe et écrivain.
C'est en effet dans le singulier et la rareté documentaires que ce cinéaste sonde des échos historiques et
culturels. Voyageur et photographe, il saisit et collectionne des fragments microcosmiques, les liant et
les montant dans les cadres divers du livre, du film et des nouveaux médias.
Abstract (E): Along with people like Césaire, Sartre and Howlett, Chris Marker cherished in 1953 the hope that African artefacts would be removed from the museum. In the film Les Statues meurent aussi (‗Statues Also Die‘ 1950-53) Marker as director and writer, accompanied by Resnais as co-director, Ghislain Cloquet as cameraman and Guy Bernard as composer, took up the mission to challenge the prevailing gaze on African artefacts. How does Marker‘s Les Statues meurent aussi look upon African art?
Abstract (F): À l‘instar de personnes comme Césaire, Sartre et Howlett, Chris Marker cultiva l‘espoir en 1953 que les artefacts africains puissent sortir du strict cadre des musées. Dans le film Les Statues meurent aussi (1950-53), Marker, en tant que réalisateur et scénariste, secondé par Resnais, comme co-réalisateur, Ghislain Cloquet comme directeur de la photographie et Guy Bernard comme compositeur, se donna pour mission de contester le regard figé prédominant sur les artefacts africains. Quel regard porte sur l‘art africain Les statues meurent aussi de Marker ?
Abstract (E): This approach of Level Five by Chris Marker aims to grasp the theoretical status of "found" words and images, which are integrated by the filmmaker into a "semi-documentary" research, within a setting that is linked to the new media. Rather than considering them as pure documents, Marker is interested in their imaginary and discursive dimension. He integrates them into fragmentary writing that one could compare to modern forms of litterature and historiography. Thus, the word "Okinawa" is the starting point of the research of a name, a discourse, an iconography and a myth. In the film, the discourse on the deaths refers to rituals of remembrance and repression ; the images take the corresponding form of this labour: repetition and stoppage. For Marker the term «archeology» takes its foucauldian dimension, in the sense that it considers facts of discourse (and of images) not as documents, but rather as monuments.
Abstract (F): Cette approche de Level Five de Chris Marker voudrait saisir le statut théorique des mots et des images "trouvées" que le cinéaste intègre dans une recherche "semi-documentaire", à l'intérieur d'un dispositif lié aux nouveaux médias. Plutôt que de les considérer comme purs documents, Marker s'intéresse à leur dimension imaginaire et discursive. Il les intègre dans une écriture fragmentaire comparable aux formes modernes de littérature et d'historiographie. Ainsi le mot "Okinawa" est-il à l'origine d'une recherche de nom, de discours, d'iconographie et de mythe. Dans le film, le discours sur les morts se réfère aux rituels du souvenir et du refoulement ; dans l'analyse du film, les images prennent la forme correspondante de ce travail : la répétition et l'arrêt. Chez Marker, la notion d'archéologie prend sa dimension foucaldienne, dans la mesure où il considère les faits de discours (et d'images) non point comme documents, mais comme monuments.
This essay on the film Statues Also Die (Les Statues meureunt aussi, Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, France, 1950-1953, 30 m) is an attempt to understand the complex relationships between film and memory. The film also poses the problems of materiality 3 of art and culture – including the photographic and indexical condition of the cinema-, and the dissociation of museums from life, both questions dealing with vanity, the human intention to preserve memories of the past, and the capacity to imagine the future. In this context, Statues also Die enquires into the " memory of the film " , and the audience's memories. In contrast to a museum exhibition, the film confronts the motionless and apparently apolitical condition of art, creating a dynamic though ambiguous movement of remembering and forgetting, which might have been the reason for the French authorities censorship, as a response to the film.
Debates concerning the veracity, ethics and politics of the documentary form circle endlessly around the function of those who participate in it, and the meaning attributed to their participation. Great significance is attached to the way that documentary filmmakers do or do not participate in the world they seek to represent, just as great significance is attached to those subjects whose participation extends beyond playing the part of eyewitness or expert, such that they become part of the very filmmaking process itself.
This Ph.D. explores the interface between documentary practice and participatory culture by looking at how their practices, discursive fields and histories intersect, but also by looking at how participating in one might mean participating in the other. In short, the research is an examination of participatory culture through the lens of documentary practice and documentary criticism. In the process, however, this examination of participatory culture will in turn shed light on documentary thinking, especially the meaning and function of ‘the participant’ in contemporary documentary practice.
A number of ways of conceiving of participation in documentary practice are discussed in this research, but one of the ideas that gives purpose to that investigation is the notion that the participant in contemporary documentary practice is someone who belongs to a participatory culture in particular. Not only does this mean that those subjects who play a part in a documentary are already informed by their engagement with a range of everyday media practices before the documentary apparatus arrives, the audience for such films are similarly informed and engaged. This audience have their own expectations about how they should be addressed by media producers in general, a fact that feeds back into their expectations about participatory approaches to documentary practice too.
It is the ambition of this research to get closer to understanding the relationship between participants in the audience, in documentary and ancillary media texts, as well as behind the camera, and to think about how these relationships constitute a context for the production and reception of documentary films, but also how this context might provide a model for thinking about participatory culture itself.
One way that documentary practice and participatory culture converge in this research is in the kind of participatory documentary that I call the ‘Camera Movie’, a narrow mode of documentary filmmaking that appeals directly to contemporary audiences’ desires for innovation and participation, something that is achieved in this case by giving documentary subjects control of the camera. If there is a certain inevitability about this research having to contend with the notion of the ‘participatory documentary’, the ‘participatory camera’ also emerges strongly in this context, especially as a conduit between producer and consumer.
Making up the creative component of this research are two documentaries about the reality television event Band In A Bubble, and participatory media practices more broadly. The single-screen film, Hubbub , gives form to the collective intelligence and polyphonous voice of contemporary audiences who must be addressed and solicited in increasingly innovative ways. One More Like That is a split-screen, DVD-Video with alternate audio channels selected by a user who thereby chooses who listens and who speaks in the ongoing conversation between media producers and media consumers.
It should be clear from the description above that my own practice does not extend to highly interactive, multi-authored or web-enabled practices, nor the distributed practices one might associate with social media and online collaboration. Mine is fundamentally a single authored, documentary video practice that seeks to analyse and represent participatory culture on screen, and for this reason the Ph.D. refrains from a sustained discussion of the kinds of collaborative practices listed above. This is not to say that such practices don’t also represent an important intersection of documentary practice and participatory culture, they simply represent a different point of intersection. Being practice-led, this research takes its procedural cues from the nature of the practice itself, and sketches parameters that are most enabling of the idea that the practice sets the terms of its own investigation.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.