This was one of the most inspiring 28 minutes of my life. Why had I never heard of this film? Maybe because I didn’t go to film school, but damn this is a great piece. Everything I try to accomplish with multimedia storytelling is right here! Not to mention the entire “film” is made from [...]
This was one of the most inspiring 28 minutes of my life. Why had I never heard of this film? Maybe because I didn’t go to film school, but damn this is a great piece. Everything I try to accomplish with multimedia storytelling is right here! Not to mention the entire “film” is made from frame grabs. And I thought David Leeson was the first. It tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel by using a series of filmed, i.e., optically printed, photographs playing out as a photomontage of varying pace with no dialogue and a narration consisting of a voice-over.
4 Responses
Powerful and Brilliant! The voice in the picture show is so powerful and reuse of photos is so moving, what a find. It is as if these images are bing burned into your brain and you’re not aware. :)
Yeah man, Chris Marker is a strange one. He’s considered one of the most innovative filmakers of the 20th Century, on a par with Jean Luc Godard and Akira Kurosawa, but hardly anyones heard of him because he’s resolutely refused to do any publicity and has hardly given any interviews during his long career, but heres one:
http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/5-6-2003/markerint.htm
‘La Jettee’ was the inspiration for the Terry Gilliam film ‘Twelve Monkeys’, and James Cameron should maybe send Chris Marker a few quid after making the Terminator movies…
‘La Jetee’ is also available as a book, (well worth seeking out) and as a DVD bundled with one of his documentaries ‘Sans Soleil’. Marker has also produced a longer documentary from stills called ‘Remembrance of Things to Come’.
Apparently he’s fascinated with multimedia and done all sorts of stuff, CD-Roms etc.
French, reclusive, a pioneer and wayward talent…the Henri Cartier Bresson of Multimedia, maybe?
Hmm…we’ll have to see in a few years won’t we? ;)
Wow, what a fantastic find. Thank you verry much for this gem.
greetz from switzerland :-)
Hey, Richard, provide some credits, okay? That film is La Jetée, a 1962 French film made up of still black-and-white photos. (La Jetée was credited as the inspiration for Terry Gilliam’s 1995 American feature film Twelve Monkeys.) I bought it on video back then for some inflated mail-order price — and I still fail to see any close connections to Twelve Monkeys! That said, I agree with you, it is very, very cool.
There is much to be learned still from the French New Wave (something they pound you with in film school). If you never saw The 400 Blows, put it on your Netflix list today.