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

A Grin Without a Cat (Chris Marker)

We'll Always Have Paris! • 2h 57m

Directed by Chris Marker • Documentary • 1977 • 178 minutes

Newly restored! A GRIN WITHOUT A CAT is Chris Marker's epic film-essay on the worldwide political wars of the 60's and 70's: Vietnam, Bolivia, May '68, Prague, Chile, and the fate of the New Left.

Released in France in 1978, restored and "re-actualized" by Marker fifteen years later (after the fall of the Soviet Union), we are proud to release the film now for the first time in the United States.

Described by Marker as "scenes of the Third World War," the film (the original French title is virtually untranslatable) is divided into two parts, each weaving together two strands:

Part 1: Fragile Hands
1. From Vietnam to Che's death
2. May 1968 and all that

Part 2: Severed Hands
1. From Spring in Prague to the Common Program of Government in France
2. From Chile to - to what?

From 1967 (the year Marker argues was the real turning point) on, A GRIN WITHOUT A CAT is a sweeping, global contemplation of a defining ten years' political history.

Tags
68, 1968, a grin without a cat, allende, anthropology and archaeology, bolivia, bravo, castro, cat, che, chile, chris, citizenship, communism, coup, cultural anthropology, de, debray, documentary, douglas, essay, europe, expository, film, fond, france, gaulle, grin, guevara, icarus films, invasion, left, mao, marker, marxism and communism, may, new, nixon, ovid, paris, political, political philosophy, politics and political science, prague, regis, revolution, rouge, s_0041, s_0065, s_0186, s_0230, s_0231, s_0286, s_0339, social issues, social movements and activism, soviet union, strike, striking, students, title_g, video, vietnam johnson, war, war and peace, western europe, without, world regions

Up Next in We'll Always Have Paris!

  • The Children of 209 Saint-Maur Street
    1:40:18
    The Children of 209 Saint-Maur Street

    The Children of 209 Saint-Maur Street

    Directed by Ruth Zylberman • Documentary • 2020 • 100 minutes

    209 rue St. Maur is a classic Parisian apartment building in the 10th arrondissement: Stone, built around a courtyard, shops on the bottom floor. In the first decades of the 20th century, it was home to some 300 working class people, ...

  • Marguerite's Theorem
    1:53:16
    Marguerite's Theorem

    Marguerite's Theorem

    Directed by Anna Novion • Drama • With Ella Rumpf, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Clotilde Courau • 2023 • 115 minutes

    The trajectory of Marguerite’s future, a brilliant mathematics PhD at France's prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure, seems perfectly planned out. As the only woman in her class in the ...

  • A Tale of Love and Desire
    1:42:29
    A Tale of Love and Desire

    A Tale of Love and Desire

    Directed by Leila Bouzid • Drama • 2022 • 103 minutes

    Ahmed (Sami Outalbali), French of Algerian origin, grew up in the suburbs of Paris. At the university, he meets Farah (Zbeida Belhajamor), a young Tunisian woman, full of energy, who has just arrived in Paris. While discovering a corpus of se...

×