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
Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 1989 • 26 minutes
“Modern and ancient democracy have no genetic relationship” -- Mihalis Sakellariou
An in-depth—but not overly dense—exploration of how Athenian democracy worked, and the key ways it differs from modern states using the word. Ancient Gre...
Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 1989 • 26 minutes
“Every European era has formed its own image of Greece made up from its own imagination. There is so much self-projection and misinterpretation.” -- Cornelius Castoriades
We begin with the personal. In interviews, classicists Manuela Sm...
Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 1989 • 26 minutes
“It’s the most Greek word I know. In a sense, it defines Greece.” --Vassilis Vassilikos
Nostalgia is there right at the start of the Greek literary tradition. Odysseus, after a decade of fighting the Trojan War, must wander another deca...