Level Five (Chris Marker)
Icarus Films
•
1h 50m
Directed by Chris Marker • Drama • With Catherine Belkhodja, Kenji Tokitsu • 1996 • 106 minutes
A woman (Laura), a computer, an invisible interlocutor: such is the setup on which LEVEL FIVE is built. She "inherits" a task: to finish writing a video game centered on the Battle of Okinawa—a tragedy practically unknown in the West, but whose development played a decisive role in the way World War II ended, as well as in postwar times and even our present.
A strange game, in fact. Contrary to classical strategy games whose purpose is to turn back the tide of history, this one seems willing only to reproduce history as it happened. While working on Okinawa and meeting through a rather unusual network—parallel to Internet—informants and even eye-witnesses to the battle (including film director Nagisa Oshima), Laura gathers pieces of the tragedy, until they start to interfere with her own life.
"A passionate and cerebral science-fiction adventure."—The New York Times
"A fascinating glimpse of a historical event that's still little known in the West."—Variety
"Marker's late masterpiece... Keeps getting more contemporary every time I watch it... Visually rich and beautifully written." —Jonathan Rosenbaum, Cinema Scope
Up Next in Icarus Films
-
Liberation: The User's Guide
Directed by Alexander Kuznetsov • Documentary • 2016 • 80 minutes
In Sibera, Russia, 18-year-old girls Julia, Ina, Olga and Katia are transferred directly from orphanages to neuropsychiatric institutions and are deprived of their rights as citizens: no freedom, no work, and no family. On the bas...
-
Little By Little
Directed by Jean Rouch • Documentary • 1969 • 92 minutes
When we re-join Rouch's collaborators Zika and Ibrahim in Ayorou, Niger, the Little By Little company they had formed at the conclusion of JAGUAR has become a large import-export company. Hearing that a competitor is building a multistory ...
-
Long Story Short
Directed by Natalie Bookchin • Documentary • 2016 • 45 minutes
In the moving and immersive film LONG STORY SHORT, over 100 people at homeless shelters, food banks, adult literacy programs, and job training centers in Los Angeles and the Bay Area in Northern California discuss their experiences o...
