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With: Helene Chatelain, Davos Hanich, Jacques Ledoux, Andre Heinrich, Jacques Branchu, Pierre Joffroy, Etienne Becker, Philbert von Lifchitz, Ligia Borowczyk, Janine Klein, William Klein, Germano Faccetti, Jean Negroni (narrator)
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Written by: Chris Marker
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Directed by: Chris Marker
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MPAA Rating: NR
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Running Time: 28
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Date: 02/16/1962
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Time and Space
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
During his distinguished career, the 82 year-old Chris Marker has directed some 40-odd films and videos. Almost all of them fall under the category of "personal essay," and hardly any of them are easily available to see. These two masterworks -- the 1962 sci-fi short La Jetée and the 1983 feature Sans Soleil -- are the only ones reasonably well known in America.
The major influence on Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, La Jetée is made up almost entirely of still photographs that tell the futuristic story of a time traveler. A prisoner is chosen for a time travel experiment; he goes back in time and meets a woman that has haunted him his entire life. The title translates to "the jetty" or "the pier."
The amazing Sans Soleil more or less documents a trip to Tokyo, focusing on small moments and rituals as well as agreements between subject and camera. The English-language narrator (Alexandra Stewart) drops in bits of universal wisdom from time to time, and virtually any five minutes of the film will astonish by themselves. Taken together, Sans Soleil makes up a tapestry of memories that questions the entire nature of memory, while celebrating that of cinema. As a kind of bonus, one segment takes us to San Francisco and traces many of Hitchcock's Vertigo shooting locations.
Both La Jetée and Sans Soleil are presented in new prints and are in English. The double-bill opens today at the Castro for a week's run. The Criterion Collection released this double-bill on DVD in 2007, and a Blu-Ray in 2012.
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