Event info

Sans Soleil // Sunless

Chris Marker

France 1983

100 min

“The first image he told me about was of three children on a road in Iceland, in 1965. He said that for him it was the image of happiness and also that he had tried several times to link it to other images, but it never worked. He wrote me; one day I'll have to put it all alone at the beginning of a film with a long piece of black leader; if they don't see happiness in the picture, at least they'll see the black.” Thus begins Sans Soleil, perhaps film history‘s most famous example of the essay film. A woman reads aloud a poetic letter from a photographer while the camera leads us to the places he‘s been, including Japan, Iceland, Guinea-Bissau and Ireland.

Chris Marker owed most of his fame to Sans Soleil and short film La Jetée, much later the inspiration behind Terry Gilliam‘s 12 Monkeys. He also directed films about Akira Kurosawa, actress Simone Signoret (they were neighbours and friends) and the overthrow of Allende‘s government in Chile. He never revealed much about his personal life and seldom allowed himself to be photographed. His past before filmmaking is still shrouded in mystery, even if numerous stories abound.