BAMcinématek presents Chris Marker, a retrospective of the master cine-essayist, Aug 15—28 Featuring the North American theatrical premiere of Level Five in a new restoration, Aug 15—21 The Wall Street Journal is the title sponsor for BAM Rose Cinemas and BAMcinématek. Brooklyn, NY/Jul 10, 2014—From Friday, August 15 through Thursday, August 28, BAMcinématek presents Chris Marker, a retrospective of the late auteur (1921—2012) whom Phillip Lopate dubbed “the one great cine-essayist in film history.” A sui generis cinema poet, French filmmaker and artist Marker used highly personal collages of moving images, photography, and text to explore weighty themes of time, memory, and political upheaval with a playful wit and an agile mind. Influenced by the Soviet montage style of editing, Marker rejected the label of cinéma vérité in favor of “ciné, ma vérité” (cinema, my truth), crafting witty, digressive, personal movies on a range of favorite subjects: history and memory, travel and Asia, animals, radical politics, filmmaking itself, and ultimately the whole of “what it’s like being on this planet at this particular moment” (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader). Born Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve, Marker took his pseudonym from the Magic Marker and remained an enigmatic figure throughout his career, eschewing interviews and photographs, present only and always in his films (and later CD-ROMs, Second Life, and other pioneering multimedia). Opening the series is the North American theatrical premiere run of Level Five (1996), screening from August 15—21 in a brand new restoration. Developing a video game about the Battle of Okinawa, a programmer (Catherine Belkhodja) becomes increasingly drawn into her work and haunted by her past in this provocative, retro-futuristic essay reflecting on the traumas of World War II and early internet culture. Rife with cinephilic references from Otto Preminger’s Laura and Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour to a cameo by Japanese director Nagisa Oshima, Level Five is also a precursor to Marker’s later fascination with digital worlds and “uses the future as a conduit to the past” (Tom Charity, Time Out London). Level Five is an Icarus Films release. Marker’s signature work remains the heart-wrenching short La Jetée (1962—Aug 22), a time travel love story told largely in still photographs and remade by Terry Gilliam as 12 Monkeys; it screens with the early short Statues Also Die (1950), co-directed with Alain Resnais, a study of African art that incorporates a critique of colonialism that enraged the French censors. Marker’s passport collected many a stamp between Sunday in Peking (1956—Aug 18), A Letter From Siberia (1958—Aug 18), and the Israel-set Description of a Struggle (1961—Aug 25), travelogues in which Marker refined his technique of using narration to inflect documentary footage with unexpected notes of poetry or irony; on occasion, he penned the narration for films made by others, including …A Valparaíso (1965—Aug 25), Joris Ivens’ symphony for an impossible Chilean city built on a steep hillside. Marker turned from observer to interlocutor for the frank person-on-the-street interviews of Le Joli Mai (1962—Aug 17), a snapshot of Parisians’ everyday concerns in a period of political turmoil. Drawn to Japan by the 1964 Olympics, Marker instead ended up making The Koumiko Mystery (1965—Aug 27), an intimate, French New Wave-influenced interview with a Japanese girl he met in the crowd; it shows with Matta (1985), the Chilean artist Roberto Matta’s guided tour of one of his exhibitions. If I Had Four Dromedaries (1966—Aug 28) assembles still images from Marker’s travels in collage form, a style to which he would return in Remembrance of Things to Come (2002—Aug 28), compiled from the arresting, prophetic 1930s—50s photographs of Surrealist chronicler Denise Bellon. A forceful critique of US involvement in Southeast Asia, Far From Vietnam (1967—Aug 16) was also an omnibus from New Wave/Left Bank icons, encompassing a self-reflexive interlude from Jean-Luc Godard and a fictional segment from Resnais, as well as contributions by Agnès Varda and William Klein. Marker’s organizational role in that film initiated a political, collaborative phase in his career, in which he sponsored working-class filmmakers’ collectives like SLON and the Medvedkin Group. The Sixth Side of the Pentagon (1967—Aug 26) documented the March on the Pentagon in incongruously gorgeous color; it screens with The Embassy (1973), a dystopic fictional work about activists sequestered inside an embassy that was inspired by Pinochet’s coup in Chile, and Prime Time in the Camps (1993), a dispatch from a Bosnian refugee camp. The Battle of the Ten Million (1970—Aug 19) was Marker’s second and more ambivalent look at Castro’s Cuba, and Be Seeing You (1968—Aug 20) conducted Le Joli Mai-esque interviews with striking textile workers in Besançon; it screens with Class of Struggle (1969), a SLON companion piece in which workers picked up cameras to rebut Marker’s film, and 2084 (1984), the director’s perversely futuristic take on a labor centennial. The epic, three-hour capstone to this phase of Marker’s work, A Grin Without a Cat (1977—Aug 24) fashioned newsreels, outtakes, and other found footage into a sweeping examination of the collapse of the New Left. Mediated through complex alter egos—a letter writer and his recipient—the Japan-centric Sans Soleil (1982—Aug 23) is the most accessible and most revealing of Marker’s Proustian reveries, ruminating upon various obsessions from Vertigo to video games. “His quintessential film…an optimistic version of Blade Runner” (J. Hoberman). As Marker’s animated cat Guillaume became his playful avatar in a curious world, he collected short films of actual animals—elephants and owls, bullfights and zoos—to create Bestiary (Aug 27), which screens with Les hommes de la baleine (1956) and Three Cheers for the Whale (1972), a pair of tributes to the marine mammal (and its hunters). Marker’s portraits of fellow filmmakers included One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich (1999—Aug 25), which visited Andrei Tarkovsky on the set of his final film, The Sacrifice, and on his deathbed; and The Train Rolls On (1971—Aug 25), a look at the forgotten cine- train, a proletarian film studio on rails fostered by Soviet director Alexander Medvedkin. Marker expanded his scrutiny of Medvedkin into The Last Bolshevik (1993—Aug 24), a biographical tribute that broadens into a survey of both the beginning and the end of the Soviet Union, which collapsed in the year of Medvedkin’s death. Press screenings to be announced. After premiering in Brooklyn, Icarus Films’ new restoration of Level Five will tour theaters nationwide including Los Angeles (Downtown Independent, Aug 16—21), Seattle (Grand Illusion Cinema, Aug 22— 28), Austin (Austin Film Society, Sep 10), Boston (Museum of Fine Arts, Sep 18—27), Chicago (Chicago Filmmakers, Sep 26—30), Columbus (The Wexner Center for the Arts, Nov 19), and more theaters to be announced. For press information, please contact: Michael Lieberman / Film Presence at 646.415.9158 / [email protected] Lisa Thomas at 718.724.8023 / [email protected] Hannah Thomas at 718.724.8002 / [email protected] Level Five An Icarus Films release | 1996 | 106min | In French with English subtitles | Color | New DCP restoration Chris Marker Schedule Fri, Aug 15 2, 4:30, 7, 9:30pm: Level Five Sat, Aug 16 2, 7pm: Far From Vietnam 4:30, 9:30pm: Level Five Sun, Aug 17 4:30pm: Le Joli Mai 2, 8pm: Level Five Mon, Aug 18 4:30, 9pm: Level Five 7pm: A Letter From Siberia + Sunday in Peking Tue, Aug 19 4:30, 9pm: Level Five 7pm: The Battle of the Ten Million Wed, Aug 20 4:30, 9pm: Level Five 7pm: Be Seeing You + Class of Struggle + 2084 Thu, Aug 21 4:30, 7, 9:30pm: Level Five Fri, Aug 22 5, 6:30, 8, 9:30pm: La Jetée + Statues Also Die Sat, Aug 23 2, 4:30, 7, 9:30pm: Sans Soleil Sun, Aug 24 2, 8:30pm: The Last Bolshevik 4:30pm: A Grin Without a Cat Mon, Aug 25 7:30pm: Description of a Struggle + Valparaíso 9:15pm: One day in the Life of Andrei Aresenevich + The Train Rolls On Tue, Aug 26 7:30, 9:15pm: Prime Time in the Camps + The Sixth Side of the Pentagon + The Embassy Wed, Aug 27 7:30pm: Bestiary + Les homes de la baleine + Three Cheers for the Whale 9pm: The Koumiko Mystery + Matta Thu, Aug 28 7, 9:15pm: Remembrance of Things to Come + If I Had Four Dromedaries Film Descriptions Films directed by Chris Marker unless otherwise noted. All films in French with English subtitles unless otherwise noted. 2084 (1984) 10min Marker commemorates the centenary of the French workers’ rights movement with this cyber-punk sci-fi short set another 100 years into the future. Digital. Screens with Be Seeing You and Class of Struggle. Wed, Aug 20 at 7pm The Battle of the Ten Million (1970) 58min In the wake of Fidel Castro’s grandiose call to his people to produce a record-breaking harvest of 10 million tons of sugar cane, Marker traveled to Cuba to report on the state of the country for Belgian television. The result is this clear-eyed, sobering look at the effects that the Communist revolution had on the country—as well as a tribute to the spirit and determination of the Cuban farmers. 16mm. Tue, Aug 19 at 7pm Be Seeing You (1968) 39min Directed by Chris Marker, Mario Marret. A 1967 worker’s strike at a textile plant in Besançon presages the rising anti-capitalist sentiment in France that would explode in full force a year later.