Lettre de Sibérie

What makes filmmakers reconsider the presence of photos, archives or footage used in films? One reason that can be an answer is reflection. The film often depicts time and events, while the way of ”exfoliation” must be reflective.

Chris Marker evokes the emergence of essay film culture that explores how significantly changing viewpoints can affect film production practices and their relationship to other types of approaches. The comprehension of Marker’s cinematographic rests on the subjectivity and textuality aspects of his film. These two aspects are also characteristic of essay films. The polysemy that he questioned and told of the complexity of history is one of the unique characteristics of his cinematography. As narratives and images no longer centred on a single meaning. In addition, Markers reflect the formation of memories that are not the result of historical cults but through dialectical schemes and creative montage techniques that involve the past by giving it meaning. Marker reflects memories of the past and nostalgia of photographs, files or sequences of footage reinvented but never disappeared. Through reflection upon images, the work lives and continues to wander. Marker does not try to reconcile politics and aesthetics but articulates them by cultivating questionable imagery and resonating their relevance in the present.

This year, FFD Retrospektif presented four of Chris Marker’s works consisting of three feature films and a short film as an attempt to revisit Marker’s work since his disappearance almost ten years ago.

— Arie Kamajaya
Programmer