Film screening: Sans Soileil (Sunless), Chris Marker

The screening forms part of the course on City Symphonies and Essay Films, but is also an open event and all are welcome!

Chris Marker (1921 - 2012) was perhaps the greatest exponent of the essay film in the late 20th. century, as well as being a film theorist and an accomplished documentarist. His work first gained broad recognition with "La Jetée" (1962) a film than has had a huge impact upon moving image art. Sans Soleil (1983) is his most poetic work, an epic montage of film material shot in many parts the world including Iceland, Japan and Africa. The film is a meditation on time, place, memory and the status of the image, and it is also the first work in which Marker engages with the new imagery of electronic media - something he engaged with deeply in his later installations and multimedia works including the CD Rom "Immemory".

Sans Soleil was produced by simple means, shot on basic film cameras without synchronised sound. Much of the audio was recorded on cassette, and a voice over was added of a woman reading a text written by Marker, but attributed to a fictitious person, Sandor Krasna. The film shows how much can be achieved by simple means, and stands as one of the greatest examples of moving image art from the 20th. century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Marker#Return_to_personal_work_(1974–1986)

https://chrismarker.org