chris marker

'The Sorbonne should be razed, and Chris Marker put up in its place,'' the poet Henri Michaux is reported to have said.


i remember giving uncle tupelo's "no depression" to a friend(he knows who he is)in a moment of enthusiastic revelation. we hadn't seen eye to eye about everything music-wise but this was an epochal album. for me, it kind of validated much of what i thought my friend & i had believed about music, the timeless qualities of the good stuff. w/o dock boggs, you don't get hank williams. w/o hank williams, you don't get johnny cash. w/o johnny cash, you don't get the band. & w/o the band, you don't get uncle tupelo. it's not so much that there's nothing "new under the sun" as much as it is anamnesis, the recognition, in various forms, of something genuine.

surprizingly, my friend didn't see it that way. "what are they doing that hasn't already been done & done better?," he sneered. o well. i couldn't sell him on the genius of chris marker either.

chris marker is 87yo now. his genius is beyond friendly dispute. his films are very beautiful & deeply emotional. the first film of his i ever saw was "san soliel," that profound meditation on time & memory, loss & recompense. i saw "last bolshevik" at uva & remember dona weeping, the contemplation of potential, human failure, & mourning too much to bear. marker has made many films over the years tho many are not available. find & see them if you can.

one of the great things about the net is that while your friends might not agree w/you, you can find someone who does. here's a great link to site that is all things chris marker, so it's really good.