GET 25% OFF YOUR FIRST YEAR!

Limited time - use promo code: FALL25 at checkout

Live stream preview

Watch this video and more on OVID.tv

Watch this video and more on OVID.tv

Start your free trial

Already subscribed? Sign in

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

Up Next in Chris Marker

  • Blue Helmet
    25:01
    Blue Helmet

    Blue Helmet

    Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 1995 • 25 minutes

    For six months in 1994, François Crémieux served as a French UN peacekeeper near the Bosnian town of Bihać. He never saw combat, barely even experienced physical discomfort—but he was left deeply shaken by the experience.

    In BLUE HELMET...

  • Prime Time in the Camps
    27:30
    Prime Time in the Camps

    Prime Time in the Camps

    Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 1993 • 28 minutes

    In Roska Camp in Slovenia, Bosnian refugees, deprived of their belongings, decide with the technical help of an N.G.O. to create a way to share information. They decide to make a television program, edited with equipment to make it look ...

  • Berliner Ballade
    29:08
    Berliner Ballade

    Berliner Ballade

    Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 1990 • 29 minutes

    Some months after the fall of the Berlin wall, Chris Marker shot this passionate documentary, reflecting the state of the place and its spirit with remarkable acuity. It is a complete version of a film that was created for French televis...

×