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The film profiles the life and work of photojournalism pioneer Denise Bellon (1902-1999), providing a dazzling historical portrait of the momentous international events occurring between 1935 and 1955 and a reflection on the relations between photography, memory, thought and history.
| Catalog Number: MC-884 |
Type: Feature |
Genre: Photography |
| Copyright: 2001 |
Length: 42 minutes |
Format:
DVD Region: 1 |
| TV System: NTSC |
ISBN: |
UPC: 854565001060 |
| Label: Icarus Films |
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Exhibition:
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Films In Compilation
Remembrance of Things to Come directed by
Chris
Marker
USA,
Documentary,
2001,
B&W,
00:42:00
A small masterpiece of montage, REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS TO COME is from moment to moment reminiscent of Resnais, Ivens, even Kubrick, but in its deployment of still photographs (as in La Jetée), its ...
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2008-10-23 Slant Magazine
By Eric Henderson
In La Jetée, Chris Marker finesses still images that are meant to simultaneously represent the past as well as the future until they approximate motion. That is to say, he takes frames that exist in alternative time zones and wills them into motion, a motion that is, in filmic terms, the very embodiment of the present tense. Remembrance of Things to Come may sound from its title like a cute turn on Proustian concerns, but it is actually a haunting examination of another photographer's work, a body of pictures that Marker seems to conclude reflect the parallel existence of past and future in much the same way he earlier proposed via sci-fi parable.
Marker sees Denise Bellon (whose daughter Yannick Bellon co-directed this film with Marker) not quite as a photojournalist, not quite as a documentarian, not quite as an aesthetician. She was an image-maker. Bellon's work coincided not only with her association with the rise of surrealism, but also the false sense of social and political lull that assuaged Europe between the two World Wars. Marker thoroughly mines her photography for all the ethnographic, artistic, historic and philosophical merit it's worth, and if the sensory results are, typical of Marker, more difficult to explain than most other films, the implications he suggests (without ever actually outright pushing) have an intimidating clarity.
Bellon shoots images of supple young 1930s bodies in their nakedness; Marker sees the vigor of denial. Bellon shoots the smiling but discernibly saddened face of a Moroccan prostitute; Marker ruminates on mankind's infallible sense of self-determined premonition. Bellon shoots Salvador Dali; Marker notes the lack of a cat within the frame. I'm deliberately misrepresenting what images spurn which discursive theories in order to draw attention to how complex and knotted Marker's presentation can be. Marker builds his arguments from the diaspora of his brain waves, but Remembrance of Things to Come briefly and succinctly reiterates Marker's notion that photography's ability to stretch a single moment into a pocket time warp serves as a metaphor for our own multifaceted experiences. We all operate with the knowledge of our own timelines and how they work within history's chronology. Marker's just a little bit more wry about blurring the distinction.
Image/Sound
The worst I can say about this transfer is that it's not anamorphic. The approximately 1.78:1 aspect ratio will look a little bit pinched on widescreen monitors. There's also a corresponding lack of detail within the images that, given the subject matter, is beyond unfortunate. Still, it appears to have been sourced from a clean video transfer, and the narration of Alexandra Stewart (who also voiced the English-language version of Sans Soleil) rings clear.
Extras
Marker devotes one major through line of his tapestry to Bellon's daughters, and though the extra features here don't do much more to expose the daughter who stood in front of the cameras, it does provide more context for the one who went behind them (i.e. the co-director of Remembrance). Yannick Bellon's 1950 documentary Colette follows the eccentric author of the title. As you can probably imagine, its 30 minutes aren't exactly spent running down the details a la David Copperfield.
Overall
Perhaps Chris Marker is ageless because he compresses the past and present into one cosmic "now."
| 2008-08-25 Film Comment
A diverse sampling from Chris Marker's rich body of work.
| 2008-08-25 Los Angeles Times
By Kevin Thomas
A dazzling montage of images.
| 2008-07-30 The New York Times
By Elvis Mitchell
The most unforgettable film of any length you will see this year. Mr. Marker's own intrigue with impatience - his fleet films dance by in an instant, while using the music of pauses and silence to convey an almost inscrutable density - is a marvel when married to an admiring biography.
| 2008-07-30 The Village Voice
By Jessica Winter
Less discursive and more prescribed - albeit by an extraordinary single archive of pictures - than many of Marker's efforts, REMEMBRANCE is foremost a tribute to a proud career.
| 2008-07-30 LA Weekly
An ingenious use of still photographs. Marker and Bellon not only prompt us to re-imagine the past, but to rethink what the past means, and grasp that our futures are always with us, in embryo.
| 2008-07-30 The New York Sun
By Nathan Lee
Mr. Marker is an unusually perceptive critic with a razor-sharp, aphoristic turn of mind. [He] proceeds through hundreds of Dellon photographs...teasing out associations, making connections, reading prophecy in reportage. Though it's ultimately addressing the tragedy the 20th Century, this slender little film is a joy.
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Case of the Grinning Cat, The
MC-882, 2004
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In his most recent film, Chris Marker reflects on art, culture and politics at the start of the new millennium by embarking on a
cinematic journey through Paris to track down the mysterious appearances of grinning yellow cat paintings all over the... more >
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Last Bolshevik
MC-883, 1993
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Based on the life and work of the great Russian film director Alexander Medvedkin (1900-1989), THE LAST BOLSHEVIK is a tribute from one filmmaker to another through an archeological expedition into film history, exploring the relations between art... more >
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Sixth Side of the Pentagon,The and The Embassy
MC-885, 1967
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The film is a first-person documentary on the October 1967 March on the Pentagon for the Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam, with Marker filming in the midst of the often violent protest. It is a remarkable time capsule and a reminder of an... more >
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