While the way history is connected to our lives is for most of us abstract and bound to the few times we visit a museum, watch a documentary on TV or share a few moments of contemplation, the links are often too complex to truly fathom. Even though there is no denying its impact, there are many cultures and systems which take a different stance to their past, silence those who speak about it or omit certain details that may violate a nation’s self-image. Throughout his career, French filmmaker Chris Marker has dedicated his many features to the subject of time, how it shapes us and the world we live, along with the concepts of individual and cultural narratives. In works such as “La Jetée”, “A Grin Without a Cat” and “Sans Soleil”, arguably his best work, he has explored ways to highlight these connections and concepts, using a unique and creative audiovisual approach.
- 5/7/2022
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Okinawa’s reverting from American to Japan, our friends at New York’s Japan Society will host, from May 13 to June 3, Visions of Okinawa, a retrospective that “documents the dynamic historical, political and cultural spaces of Okinawa around this pivotal point in history through in-person screenings and streamed films exploring the legacies of the Occupation, WWII and imperialism.”
We’re proud to debut the trailer for their series, which mixes “mainland filmmakers, native Okinawans and documentarians,” the series includes Chris Marker’s Level Five and Oshima’s Dear Summer Sister, which I don’t recall ever screening in New York—much less on a 35mm print. The Focus on the Nihon Documentarist Union (Ndu) documentaries will be screening for the first time outside Japan and streaming worldwide (except Japan and Taiwan). Being that Go Takamine’s Paradise View (another one I don’t think...
We’re proud to debut the trailer for their series, which mixes “mainland filmmakers, native Okinawans and documentarians,” the series includes Chris Marker’s Level Five and Oshima’s Dear Summer Sister, which I don’t recall ever screening in New York—much less on a 35mm print. The Focus on the Nihon Documentarist Union (Ndu) documentaries will be screening for the first time outside Japan and streaming worldwide (except Japan and Taiwan). Being that Go Takamine’s Paradise View (another one I don’t think...
- 4/25/2022
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Marking 50 years since Okinawa’s reversion from American sovereignty back to Japan, Visions of Okinawa documents the dynamic historical, political and cultural spaces of Okinawa around this pivotal point in history through in-person screenings and streamed films exploring the legacies of the Occupation, WWII and imperialism. Primarily focusing on films made around the time of or dealing with the 1972 reversion, Visions of Okinawa addresses issues of identity, race and borders by presenting diverse and complicated reflections on the prefecture from mainland filmmakers, native Okinawans and documentarians.
In-theater Screenings
All in-person screenings will take place in Japan Society’s auditorium, located at 333 E. 47th Street in New York, NY.
Paradise View
Friday, May 13, 2022 at 7:00 Pm
Dir. Go Takamine, 1985, 117 min., Dcp, color, in Okinawan (Uchinaaguchi) and Japanese with English subtitles. With Kaoru Kobayashi, Jun Togawa, Haruomi Hosono.
North American Premiere of 2021 edit. Go Takamine’s rarely screened first theatrical feature is...
In-theater Screenings
All in-person screenings will take place in Japan Society’s auditorium, located at 333 E. 47th Street in New York, NY.
Paradise View
Friday, May 13, 2022 at 7:00 Pm
Dir. Go Takamine, 1985, 117 min., Dcp, color, in Okinawan (Uchinaaguchi) and Japanese with English subtitles. With Kaoru Kobayashi, Jun Togawa, Haruomi Hosono.
North American Premiere of 2021 edit. Go Takamine’s rarely screened first theatrical feature is...
- 4/15/2022
- by Suzie Cho
- AsianMoviePulse
Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Chris Marker's Level Five (1997) is playing September 17 - October 17, 2017 in most countries around the world as part of the retrospective Chris Marker: An Essayist from the Future.Midway into Chris Marker’s Level Five (1997), Laura (Catherine Belkhodja) ponders aloud what ethnologists of the future might think of the video diaries she makes throughout the course of the film. Answering to their presumed curiosity, she tells those future detectives, “Yes it was customary for such tribes to address a familiar and protective spirit known as a computer…They’d consult on everything, it kept their memory. In fact, they no longer had a memory. It was their memory.” If one had to make a sweeping statement about this dense, multivalent film, one could do worse than suggest that Level Five’s subject is this externalization of memory into media addressed by Laura,...
- 9/24/2017
- MUBI
Level Five
Written & Directed by Chris Marker
France, 1997
As visual animals, to a large extent, something doesn’t truly exist until we see it. What, then, do we make of memories, which may seem just as real as any image, but are subject to degradation and bias? They are the ethereal made real; flights of fancy, fact and practical necessity. Level Five, produced in 1997 and recently restored for a limited North American release, finds accomplished film essayist, Chris Marker, questioning the nature of memory in the new digital age. Though his big ideas and haunting visuals never quite coalesce, Marker still provides a fascinating peek into the darkest corners of humanity.
“I won already, but we could go on if you like.”
Such is the game confronting our heroine, Laura (Catherine Belkhodja), who is tasked (by Marker himself) with reconstructing the Battle of Okinawa for a videogame. A pivotal battle...
Written & Directed by Chris Marker
France, 1997
As visual animals, to a large extent, something doesn’t truly exist until we see it. What, then, do we make of memories, which may seem just as real as any image, but are subject to degradation and bias? They are the ethereal made real; flights of fancy, fact and practical necessity. Level Five, produced in 1997 and recently restored for a limited North American release, finds accomplished film essayist, Chris Marker, questioning the nature of memory in the new digital age. Though his big ideas and haunting visuals never quite coalesce, Marker still provides a fascinating peek into the darkest corners of humanity.
“I won already, but we could go on if you like.”
Such is the game confronting our heroine, Laura (Catherine Belkhodja), who is tasked (by Marker himself) with reconstructing the Battle of Okinawa for a videogame. A pivotal battle...
- 8/25/2014
- by J.R. Kinnard
- SoundOnSight
It was only natural for Chris Marker to take to online culture as keenly as he did in his later years—in his quizzical, often unclassifiable cinema, where ultramodern technology shares space with humanity’s insistent past, he had envisioned linkages of disparate global data long before the Internet had its first dial-up connection. Marker’s 1997 feature Level Five (having its North American premiere August 14th as part of BAMcinématek’s comprehensive retrospective) finds the great, elusive essayist deep in cyber-territory. A hand, perhaps Marker’s own, maneuvers a tabletop computer mouse in the introductory Pov shot; the camera zooms into the pixelated blur of the machine’s monitor which is readily filled with superimpositions of nightscapes and faces. “What can these be,” asks a disembodied female voice, “but the playthings of a mad god who made us build them for him?”
That's William Gibson territory, and, indeed Level Five...
That's William Gibson territory, and, indeed Level Five...
- 8/14/2014
- by Fernando F. Croce
- MUBI
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