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Creator of Time's "BestTime Travel Movie Ever," La Jetée, Chris Marker dies at 91

psood0nym

Bluelighter
Joined
Dec 1, 2005
Messages
4,493
Creator of Time's "BestTime Travel Movie Ever," La Jetée, Chris Marker dies at 91

Fittingly, a Chris Markian themed sequence of events, implicating Bluelight as well, led me to the news of Marker’s death tonight.

I was looking over the only thread I’ve made in three months, “Stupiest sci-fi concepts” -- wherein, unknowingly upon the reported night of Marker’s death, I had posted “La Jetée” at the most artistically defensible end of my “snooty logical effrontery scale” for dumb time travel narratives -- when I noticed Bluelight’s own thujone had indicated he meant to see it. My search for an online stream of the short film for him brought me to its Criterion Collection page, where there was a link to the article “Chris Marker’s Second Life,” which is a transcript of an interview Marker did from within the Second Life virtual world, where he adopted the avatar of a cat named “Guillaume.” “Chris Marker” is actually the pseudonym of Christian Francois Bouche-Villeneuve, and so, I couldn’t help but feel a bit odd that I, psood0nym, was reading an interview with a pseudonymous man cloaked by a virtual pseudonymous avatar. I read through the interview until I reached this section:
IA: You were saying that [Second Life] recaptured the spirit of The Invention of Morel for you. What part of your films does SL recapture for you?
SM: The presence of Guillaume the cat, anyhow. Did you notice how he’s made himself entirely at home over here?
IA: Haven’t you played a part in that?
SM: That’s a common error. It’s difficult to explain it to anyone who hasn’t been a cat in a past life, as is my case. Guillaume’s personality imposed itself on my Viennese accomplices without my ever having to ask. You can ask them yourself. Cats, you know, have certain powers.
At this point my girlfriend asked what I was reading. I gave her a brief description and took the last sip of my drink. As I headed toward the kitchen for a refill I saw our cat staring at me. I knelt down to her and whispered, “do you have powers?” Immediately, the following image from Chris Marker’s “San Soleil” (my favorite documentary of all time) was evoked in my memory:

tumblr_m7zdgvRtX81qztppko1_1280.jpg


This inspired me to type “Chris Marker cats” into Google upon my return to the computer, whereupon in the results I saw “Chris Marker, filmmaker, and lover of cats, dies at 91.”

Here's my internet history from the time period (bit altered because I didn't think to do a screen capture until after Firefox's "last modified" dates were changed):

2d6pd9t.jpg


San Soleil was the first "real film" I think I saw back as a highschooler on VHS, and so to have this little bit of life imitating art happen to me and not acknowledge it on the occasion seemed remiss.
 
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Well, since I was the one who called the Time Travel concept "stupid", I suppose I better see just how artistically defensible is 'La Jetee'.
 
^It's only 26:37 -- very little time travel is involved on the viewer's part. There's a fairly decent version on YouTube in 2 parts.
 
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