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The Case of the Grinning Cat

Chris Marker • 57m

Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 2004 • 58 minutes

In his newest film, French documentarian and cinema-essayist Chris Marker reflects on French and international politics, art and culture at the start of the new millennium. In November 2001, the filmmaker became intrigued, as did many other Parisians, by the sudden appearance of alluring portraits of grinning yellow cats on buildings, Metro walls and other public surfaces. Marker's cinematic efforts to document the mysterious materializations of this charming feline throughout Paris are a recurring theme of THE CASE OF THE GRINNING CAT.

Chris Marker concludes THE CASE OF THE GRINNING CAT with thoughts on the vital importance of such expressions of imagination in our public lives, echoing the May '68 slogan that 'La poésie est dans la rue' ('Poetry is in the street').

"Lively, engaged, and provocative!"—J. Hoberman, The Village Voice 

Tags
art history, celebrity scandals, chats perches, china, chris marker, cinema-essayist, citizenship, communication, communication and media studies, democracy, demonstrations, documentarian, documentary, dvd, election campaigns, essayistic, europe, film, france, graffiti, homestream, icarus films, international politics, iraq war, memorials, mr. cat, ovid, ovid_ca, paris, parisians, political philosophy, politics and political science, pompidou center, s_0041, s_0048, s_0231, s_0280, s_0299, s_0339, social issues, social movements and activism, social studies, street art, strikes, the case of the grinning cat, tibet, title_abc, title_c, urban studies, video, western europe, world regions, yellow cats

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