Perhaps it’s because they embody my sense of Sans soleil passing through my consciousness like a dream.) (One image that has always stuck with me is that of sleeping ferry passengers. The delicious irony of the above citation is that Sans soleil, like so much Marker, is possessed of such density, is so saturated with looking, listening, musing, is so disinterested in familiar structural signposts, that even after multiple viewings, you’re unlikely to remember most of it. Among the cascade of spoken koans, digressions, and reportage that suffuse Chris Marker’s sui generis essay film Sans soleil (1983), this might constitute the closest thing to a thesis statement: “I will have spent my life trying to understand the function of remembering, which is not the opposite of forgetting, but rather its lining.” This paradoxical binding of anamnesis and amnesia reads retrospectively as prophecy: Marker, who was born 100 years ago this July 29, who died nine years ago this July 29, who made more films or film-adjacent things than most ardent cinephiles can boast to having actually laid eyes on, was, despite the expansiveness and diversity of his oeuvre, consistently dedicated to the pursuit of apprehending memory’s nature, purpose, and significance.
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