On the centenary of Chris Marker

I have documented many times both here and on the Funhouse TV series my fascination with, and love for, the work of Chris Marker. On this day, the 100th anniversary of his birth, I can only say once again that the discovery of the short sci-fi romance (one of the greatest love stories ever) “La Jetée” (1962) when I was in college changed my life. Everything that came after that — seeing Marker’s brilliant documentaries, his film “essay” meditations on cultures, war, the passage of time and memory, and even his cute and silly videos about animals — made me respect and love the man and his work even more.

Currently, we are lucky to have his work readily available on disc and streaming. Icarus Films has made a practice of putting out all of his major features, there’s a Criterion release of his two most famous films (“La Jetée” and Sans Soleil), and his shorts and “lost” features (including two he suppressed because he fell out of love with countries he formerly celebrated, thanks to their oppressive policies) are tucked away on YouTube, for those who have the curiosity and want to see how this master storyteller and cameraman “framed” the world around him. 

To become acquainted with his work, one must first see “La Jetée.” Everyone should see “La Jetée” — it is a perfect work, a curio in that it is a fiction film by an artist who produced scant fiction, a superb montage of photographs by a master filmmaker, and a sublime work on the strength and importance of memory by a man who now himself is a memory (but a strong one). 

Here is the film with English subtitles:

 

What should one see after “La Jetée”? It’s hard to say which direction to go in — since Marker went in several before and after his signature work. (Arguably the most important being a series of “engaged” Left-wing political film essays.) The best intro used to be paging through his amazing photography on his Gorgomancy site, through the corridors and closets of his CD-ROM collection of his photographic work, “Immemory.”

But the death of Flash has killed that glorious interactive experience – just as Apple screwed the original CD-ROM incarnation of Marker’s digitized “museum” by making all of its updated OS systems incompatible with earlier systems. The Gorgomancy site still exists, but lacking the seminal labyrinth of “Immemory,” it is primarily for those who already know Marker’s work and are looking for a deeper dive. I explored the other works on the site (and “Immemory”) in this 2011 blog post about Marker.

What we have left now (unless some master-animator can recreate the “museum” in another format that won’t die like Flash did) is a video that shows what the experience USED to be like. It was like rummaging through Marker’s mind, the memories of his past, and a deep, deep trove of his exquisite photography.

 

The Net archive that is most useful for one who is curious about Marker as an artist and a person is the remarkable chrismarker.org, which has articles on many aspects of Marker’s work and life. I would also toot my own horn for a second and point you to my Deceased Artiste tribute to Marker. 

The only problem with my piece? Many of the embeds went down — but the photos and text are still there, and they still reflect my ongoing Marker obsession. This problem of films being uploaded and then being taken down led me to go strictly for the photos when I wrote about the 2018 exhibit at the Cinematheque Francaise of Marker artifacts and films. I’m quite proud of that piece as well, and here it is.

What I can offer on this, the centenary of Marker’s birth, is another “survey” of what is available online. Icarus Films has, again, the full-length features available on disc and in streaming form. Good intros from their trove are Marker’s film/video “essays” The Last Bolshevik and The Case of the Grinning Cat. If one is interested in history, you can’t do better than his Grin Without a Cat, his superb account of what tore the world apart in 1968.

 

As for the many other items — the shorts, “lost” films, and the videos he made in his final years (which range from glorious to very slight, but the last ones were made when he was sick with cancer) — they are still gloriously online (and most with subtitles, even!). 

If one is looking for “another ‘La Jetée,’’’ the immediate answer is Marker’s only other straightforward (although that is hardly the right word) sci-fi scenario, “Les Astronautes,” a collage-animation short made with Walerian Borowczyk in 1959. It follows the adventures of a man with a home-made rocket ship.

 

The other film that recaptures the genius of Marker for “making photography into film” was his short “If I Had Four Camels” (1966), which is comprised of nothing but photographs and spins a tale of a photographer and his friends.

 

The other film besides “La Jetée” that received the biggest distribution in this country is Sans Soleil (1983), which is one of his most engrossing “essays.” It purports to be a collection of letters from a cameraman (with a pseudonym, Sandor Krasna, that Marker himself often used — as he also composed the music in the film under a pseudonym). 

The entire film is on YT but can’t be embedded — not because Janus/Criterion has taken umbrage at it being offered for free online, but because one Japanese company that owns the Japanese TV footage we see go by in the film wants to receive hard cash from YouTube! Check the entire film out here. 

Marker's earliest films are beautiful visually, but his play with the notion of what images represent was first introduced in “Letters from Siberia” (1958). Here he presents the same footage with three different narrations: a Soviet aggrandizing one, an American put-down, and the truth, which is firmly located in between those two poles.

 

As mentioned above, Marker pulled two of his features from distribution. In both cases he was initially infatuated with the governments of countries that then turned out to be oppressive in their own special ways. The first was Israel, in “Description of a Struggle” (1960). 

The whole film can be found in Hebrew here. But this is a nice minute from the version of the film with English narration:

 

The other government he fell out of love with was Cuba. Here is an English-subtitled (turn on the Closed Captions) version of his missing “Cuba Si!” (1961).

  

Certain countries Marker remained in love with until the end of his days. One of those was Japan — where he was honored with a bar with a “La Jetée” theme! Here is The Mystery of Koumiko (1965), his beautiful meditation on the country and on a certain Japanese girl. (Marker was in love with women the world over, and his camera captured them in beautiful and unforgettable ways.)

 

One of his most curious shorts is “The Embassy” (1973). It’s shot like a documentary, but in fact is a work of fiction — by saying this I blow the surprise ending, but the film itself is still a marvel, given how authentic it looks and sounds. This is the version with a (muffled, but that’s the way it always sounds) English soundtrack.

 

Marker moved ahead with the times — he was enraptured by the Internet, dove right in when it came to CD-ROMs, and had at the time of his death at the age of 91 both an active Instagram account and a YouTube channel. A few of the YT videos seems quite slight, but that, it must be revealed (and it finally was, in the book that accompanied the Cinematheque exhibition), was because Marker was battling cancer and was forced to stay in Paris for treatment at that time. (He was a world traveller who shot photos, if not film/video, on most of the continents.) 

I will spotlight four of these videos, put up on YT on the Kosinki account. One of the most important aspects of Marker’s work was how it ranged from playful to deeply moving, as his work betrayed his love for the arts (and people). The first lovely/bizarre creation is “Pictures From an Exhibition,” his display of his own digital-collage creations:

 

His last major photography exhibit was comprised of photos he took in the Paris Metro. Again, Marker’s love of women came to the surface, as he showed us the faces of women traveling on the Metro. In the book that came from the exhibit, he contrasted the faces of his “passengers” with women from classic paintings:

 

Here we see the art of his editing at its finest. This time the photos are not his, but those of others (taken from news publications) depicting the Egyptian revolution of 2011.

 

And finally, a playful, very short piece (that doesn’t involve animals!). A meditation on cinematic masters (two American, two French) that ends with a silly but amusing riff on a very famous photo that appeared after a specific terrorist leader was killed. (The image of Godard with “Karina glasses” alone is miraculous to those of us who revere Uncle Jean.)

 

There are currently several hundred Marker uploads on YouTube. The ones on the Kosinki account were put up by him, but there is also a tribute account (seemingly with access to some very “inside” footage), which contains clips from his films, shorts, extremely rare items, and Marker-esque videos of a current vintage. (Some of these work well; others not as well…) The account is named for Marker’s beloved cat (and alter-ego) Guillaume-en- Égypte. 

The most miraculous thing to greet Marker fans is the sight of Chris himself (he had hidden from cameras for years) — born Christian Bouche-Villeneuve on, of course, July 29, 1921. Here, the camera is turned on the photographer, as we see Marker riding the Metro wearing his camera-sunglasses (yes, he was an inventor as well as an artist).

 

And finally, in his most common mode, video recorder in hand on May Day, 2009. To quote the man himself (on the subject of the filmmaker finding connections in his own work that he hadn’t suspected were there), “You never know what you might be filming.”

'Une vraie' Second Life: Chris Marker at the Cinematheque Francaise

The mysteries of art can be solved with personal interpretation, or by absorbing the opinions of experts and historians. The mysteries of those who made the art can never be solved, and we are probably all the better for that.

In the case of Chris Marker (in the top rank of Funhouse favorites), we encounter an artist who refused to let himself become a media personality — the kind of artist who explains his work and ultimately draws attention away from it. Marker’s creation of a personal “absence” was the best way of letting his work speak for itself.

So what to make of the beautifully rendered tributes that have appeared since his death in 2012, in the form of articles, books, film retros, gallery shows, and now a comprehensive retrospective and exhibit at the Cinematheque Francaise (running through Marker’s birthday, July 29)? Marker changed his opinions about a lot of his early work — thus his withdrawal of films that espoused political beliefs he no longer had, and his continued reworking (for a quarter century) of one of his masterpieces (Le fond de l'air est rouge).

One can imagine he would have appreciated the careful arrangement of his work in the Cinematheque exhibit, as well as its focus on his techniques and the hopeful messages with which he ended even his most tragic accounts of political turmoil. He might have even been okay (I emphasize that “might”) with the many photos of his face that are on display.

Marker was a world traveler for most of his professional life, but he always kept an apartment in Paris as his HQ. It’s only fitting therefore that the most comprehensive retro of his work should appear in that city, in his native France (he was born Christian Bouche-Villeneuve), where serious film appreciation isn’t viewed as a specialized or “cult” course of study. The fact that the Cinematheque is the premier cinephile institution in the world makes it even more perfect for Marker to be saluted there.

This exhibition comes at an excellent time: when Marker’s films have nearly all been released on DVD in France (the most famous titles have been issued in the U.S. as well). But Marker’s other work — as an essayist, a novelist, and a multi-media artist – isn’t readily available (unless you want to shell out big bucks for certain items on eBay or amazon.fr).

One of the rarest bits of footage in the exhibit:
a surreal short Marker codirected for TV in 1949!
La Clef des songes is a tribute to, and spoof of, the surrealist films.

Marker was a lifelong bachelor who, while having several serious relationships, never married and had no children. The fact that he left no will has made rights issues complicated since he died, but his papers and possessions ended up in the proper place — in the archives of the Cinematheque.

The many boxes containing the contents of his apartment are still in the process of being indexed, but the discoveries that have already been made are incredibly enlightening. These include many documents relating to Marker’s personal life, clarifying the details of his time as a fighter in the Resistance during WWII, his short stay in prison for crossing the wrong border (surely ironic, given his later traveling around the world), his time fighting with the American Army, his pseudonymous post-war writing, and the “militant” period in which he worked within a filmmaking collective and wasn’t credited on the films he edited or directed.

The book that has been written to accompany the exhibit is thus the best-researched and most reliable account of Marker’s life to date (although with little to no mention of his love life — that, for the present, will remain a succession of secrets) and his work in several fields, from writing plays, reviews, poetry, and short stories in the post-war period to putting up a website that contained the bulk of his photography and a few complete films (at gorgomancy.net/) and his final works (brief videos made for YouTube).

The book, it should be noted, is in French (naturellement), but one hopes for an English translation in the future. (The writing style isn’t academic, so it is a fairly straightforward read for students of French.) There are several standout essays in it, including: the first handful about Marker’s life, pre-filmmaking; Raymond Bellour’s brief but still fascinating (and amusing) explanation of what was in the 576 (!) cartons of Marker’s archives that wound up in the Cinematheque; and Jean-Michel Frodon’s piece about the relationship between Marker and Godard (which wasn’t super-friendly, but remained cordial until CM’s death).

There are several amazing items in the CInematheque exhibit. Two of the most mind-blowing are the many scrapbooks containing surrealist collages he made and collected...

...and the the sunglasses-camera he wore to take photos in the Paris Metro. His last photography project was the beautiful "Passengers," images taken on the subway that liken the tired but beautiful passengers to figures in classical paintings. 

Marker did, on rare occasions, send photos of himself to his friends. This is one he particularly seemed to enjoy, in which he is wearing his camera-glasses. (His good friend Alain Resnais did say that Chris was an "alien" who didn't seem to require sleep....)

The most surprising inclusion in both the exhibition and the book is the number of photos of Marker. One of the most important pieces of his mystique as a filmmaker was that he didn’t let himself be photographed or filmed, but apparently, he did keep copies of all the pictures his friends took of him after the early Sixties (the point at which he “disappeared” from public view).

The cat on the prowl -- Marker in the late Sixties.

The photos show an intense but mostly unremarkable-looking man (somewhat hawk-like in appearance, shaved head, rarely if ever photographed smiling). The descriptions his friends have given of the “uniform” he wore when out in public are more memorable — he preferred to wear boots, shirts with many pockets, and affected the look of a “soldier” (although I’m thinking the many pockets aspect was key for a photographer/filmmaker).

The Cinematheque screenings included the films he withdrew from circulation, due to changed political opinions about the countries profiled: Dimanche à Pekin (China), Letter from Siberia, Description of a Struggle (Israel), and Cuba Si!. He wasn’t fully satisfied with anything he had made until 1962, in which his landmark short La Jetee was released (one of the greatest films ever made, and certainly his best-known work), followed shortly after by his only “cinema verite” feature, Le Joli Mai, inspired by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin’s Chronicle of a Summer (1961).

The biggest rupture in his work, as with that of many of his filmmaking colleagues, was his commitment to radical Left-wing politics in 1967. The Cinematheque exhibition offers us ample documentation of that period, in which Marker even erased his name from his films, which were signed by the collectives he was in, SLON and Iskra.

A vintage '68 poster included in the Cinematheque exhibit.

The artifacts from Marker’s militant period are particularly timely this year, as many countries are commemorating the 50th anniversary of the events of 1968. In France, May ’68 was a turning point — the moment at which the unions joined the students in their protests against the government, and it looked as if the Left had won a major victory.

Marker beautifully summarized ‘68 and what followed in his masterful Le fond de l'air est rouge (1977) (Grin Without a Cat in the U.K. and U.S.), which is one of the best records in any medium of the tumultuous events that occurred in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Grin was a turning point — he made it at the end of his militant period as a “summing up” of sorts and continued to re-edit it for the next quarter century.

May '68. Photo by Chris Marker. In the CF exhibit.

The Cinematheque exhibit reviews the many legacies that Marker left us. La Jetee is one of the greatest science-fiction love stories of all time; it challenges young directors to break filmmaking down to its core: moving images (in this case, photographs made to move via their sequencing and editing) and jarring sound. His best nonfiction features offer a clear path for documentarians — the essay film, which wove together journalism and tenets of the finest fiction. (American political filmmakers like Michael Moore have fully developed “stories” but avoid any traces of fiction — which, as Marker discovered, reaches a greater truth – opting instead for the “confessional” or “op-ed” mode of address.)

Marker also did pioneering work with video, the CD-rom format, cyber-"traveling" (in the simulated environment Second Life, in which both he and Guillaume-en-Egypte "lived" as computer-animation figures), and the Internet. But perhaps his most valuable legacy, especially in a time like this, was his faith in the future. His militant films dwell entirely in the present — as with Godard’s radical cinema, it was a case of a filmmaker who had never “commanded” the viewer to come to a specific conclusion telling his audience what they *had* to think.

The "tech" area in the Cinematheque exhibit.

Marker’s best political films emphasize hope — not the hollow hope promised by U.S. politicians, but more of a non-spiritual belief in the possibilities offered by the future. The conclusion of Grin Without a Cat offers a sharp metaphor for the manner in which the New Left went astray in the Seventies (with the obvious message being to avoid that pitfall). The Last Bolshevik (1993) and The Case of the Grinning Cat (2004) look to youth as the answer.

As he grew older, Marker didn’t disappear into the comforts of the past but continued to look forward to future struggles, to be carried on by young people who have been enlightened by alternative sources in the new media — the kind of media that grew out of or reflects Marker’s pioneering work.
*****

Marker abandoned writing conventional fiction in the late Forties after publishing one novel (Le coeur net) and a short story. But storytelling remained his strong suit, a storytelling based on details of his own life viewed through a fictional frame and powered by incredibly precise and moving images. As we await a definitive biography of Marker, we can only experience his life through comprehensive film festivals and exhibitions like the one at the Cinematheque.

However, he did supply some clues. One of the best autobiographical nuggets, and one of the purest illustrations of his tagline “You never know what you might be filming,*” appeared in the “Staring Back” show of photography that was first mounted at the Wexner Center for the Arts in the Spring of 2007 (and then was put on in the fall of ’07 at the Peter Blum Gallery in NYC — and a portion of the show was included in the MIT exhibition called “Guillaume-en-Egypte” in October 2013).

In the exhibit and the accompanying book, Marker had one set of photos arranged chronologically. They were pictures from different demonstrations that took place over four decades. Visitors to the gallery were asked to look at the photos in a strictly chronological sequence because Marker had discovered something as he went through his pictures of “demos.”

The 1961 photo, by Marker.

He starts out in the book version with the exhortation to “Watch the tree.” Then he describes how, on Feb. 13, 1961, he shot photos of a public gathering in Paris to honor those who had died in the preceding week’s demonstration against the Algerian War. Marker sets up his metaphor: “Straight in the middle of the frame, on the balcony, among those tense faces, a young tree recently planted. Forget the faces for a moment. Just watch the tree.” [Chris Marker, Staring Back, Wexner Center for the Arts, 2007, p. 1]

He next includes pics from the 1967 march on the Pentagon, and Paris in May ’68, offering more faces and actions to contemplate. He closed this sequence out with pictures taken at a protest in early 2002 in Paris at a time when “the consensus is that the French youth are fed up with politics.” The protest was held to condemn the positions of the ultra-right wing candidate for president, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Picture from a 2002 demonstration by C. Marker.

“At once the youngsters invade the street. Many for the first time. Thanks to Mr. Le Pen, a new generation takes the baton.” [ibid, p. 21]. The next 21 pages show the pictures Marker took at that protest. Marker declares that “Today’s mottoes deal with unemployment, income, fears of uncertain retirement (at 20… and yet in the long run they’re right). As my lens slips inside the crowd like an inquisitive snake, what it frames is, despite the apparent cohesiveness of the groups, the everlasting face of solitude.” [ibid, p. 27]

The photos from '61 and 2002,
by Marker. Via chrismarker.org/.

He ends the section with a picture taken on that day in 2002, showing the exact same location seen in the 1961 photos, in Paris’s Place de la Republique. He tells us how many, many moments of turmoil (and hope) he had seen around the world in the four decades that came between the two photos taken on that street.

“… In the middle, on the balcony, the tree has grown, just a little.

Within these few inches, forty years of my life.” [ibid, p. 43]

One is struck by the sincerity and emotion that drives Marker’s political cinema. To him, though, it clearly was the product of a seed he was given early on by mentors and friends, a seed that kept growing over the decades until…. well, you get the picture.
*****“

"I remember that month of January in Tokyo, or rather I remember the images I filmed of the month of January in Tokyo. They have substituted themselves for my memory. They are my memory. I wonder how people remember things who don't film, don't photograph, don't tape. How has mankind managed to remember? I know: it wrote the Bible. The new Bible will be an eternal magnetic tape of a time that will have to reread itself constantly just to know it existed.” – CM, San Soleil 
***** 

The Cinematheque exhibit is at the Cinematheque Francaise until July 29.

Marker’s website “Gorgomancy” has remained fully operative.Visit it!

The best English-language resource online for information about Marker is the “Notes from the Era of Imperfect Memory” blog at chrismarker.org.

Merci beaucoup to Jean-Michel Frodon and Ody Roos for their insights into Marker the artist and Marker the man. (It was a helluva birthday present for me this year!)

*The line has been translated in English as “You never know what you are filming,” “You never know what you’re filming until later,” and “You never know what you may be filming.” I have stuck with the clearest variation on this phrase.

Adam Curtis, the contrarian documentarian (part 2 of two)

I was so intrigued by Curtis's answer to my question at his lecture, and the fact that his documentaries – and the Armory show in particular – boldly contradict what he had said about the avant-garde (in that they contain avant-garde moments, or entire passages) that I looked online to see if he'd been asked about his influences and his visual style. Some interviewers have indeed asked him about those elements – and they've gotten the same oddly dismissive answer that I received at the lecture.

In a June 6, 2011 piece in The Guardian by Ross Biddiscombe, Curtis states outright that he “is not a documentary maker, but a journalist who tells stories that 'take serious journalism and fine tune it with low-end trash and jokes' and he dismisses anyone who considers his films – with their unique convergence of quick-fire visual images and off-beat music and background noises – to be some kind of modern art form.”

In an interview done by Nathan Budzinski for The Wire website in July of 2011, Curtis again dismisses that his telefilms have any artistic aspects. He says his style is a matter of “Trash pop. All I care about is trash pop... In the films, the inner DJ comes out. That is what it is, it's me nicking all the stuff I like."

Budzinksi cuts right to the heart of the matter by asking Curtis about his father, who worked as a cameraman for the legendary British documentarian Humphrey Jennings. Curtis's response? “'Well, we musn't fetishise it. Yes, he was his cameraman, that's it really. And he [Curtis's father] took me to see a lot of pretentious avant garde films when I was a child.' I ask if he remembers any of them. 'I think they were Jean-Luc Godard films, but I don't remember. Basically I thought they were a bit boring [laughs]. I just remember them having a lot of energy.' "

Curtis is also asked by Budzinski about influences. “Guy Debord's Society Of The Spectacle or Chris Marker's films spring to (my) mind. But Curtis is elusive. He says that Marker is an admirer of his and that they've met through a mutual friend, but doesn't admit to having watched his films. He thinks Debord is too intimidating and obscurantist.” [emphasis added]

In an interview posted on July 7, 2012 by Chris Darke on the Film Comment site, he is again asked about Marker, for obvious reasons. He says that he was told by mutual friends that Marker liked his work, but “I don’t really know that much about art film history. I nick good ideas I see, but I don’t really know that much about him. All I know is that he’s like a god of that world so I’d be terrified to meet him. I do like his films a lot, but I don’t really think they’re like mine at all..... He can do sustained things, and I wouldn’t know how to do that. I wouldn’t know how to begin.”[Emphasis added.]

In the Film Comment piece, he also goes off on “the art lot.” When asked to clarify, he says, “People who make art! For some unknown reason they’ve decided they like me and I’m always incredibly rude to them. This goes back to my fear of Chris Marker, that there’s another way of portraying the world, which I don’t understand because I have a deep, almost nerdy, desire to explain....”

There is a heavy element of teenage rebellion in the way Curtis speaks about well-respected filmmakers; it has the air of someone who feels that things deemed to be “high art” aren't entertaining and should thus be mocked and rejected entirely (but only after you “nick” ideas from them). It also curiously smacks of the “populist” attitude that Curtis himself attributed to Rupert Murdoch in this segment he did for Charlie Brooker's 2011 Wipe:

There is something oddly disingenuous about this line of argument – there is an evident glee at “rebelling” against the older generation of documentarians (including his dad and his colleagues), “the art lot,” and anyone who respects their work.

The final key point in the Wire interview is one that he raised in the lecture at the Armory, and one that immediately occurs to anyone who is trying to assimilate his opinions: he feels that present-day society is being buried under the crushing weight of images and music from the past, and yet he himself assembles documentaries that are perhaps 75% old footage (depending on the project). How can he reconcile that?

He admits that he is indeed “part of the problem.” At the lecture he noted that there was a moment at the close of the “MA vs. AC” show that would acknowledge that both he and Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack indulge in the same kind of romanticizing of the past that he's condemning. I witnessed no such moment in the show, simply a blanket condemnation of viewing the work of “dead stars” on a daily basis on the Internet (at this point an image of Michael Jackson moonwalking heralded the Attack playing a great cover of “Bela Lugosi's Dead”).
******

So we are confronted with an incredibly talented contrarian who dismisses the notion that he is an artist, and yet he assembles gallery shows and multimedia events for performance spaces. He's in a lineage of filmmakers for whom he evidences a dismissive, often disdainful attitude. His questioning of the “government line” and expertise at connecting the dots in his documentaries has also brought him an audience of, for lack of a better term, “conspiracy theorists,” whom he dismisses completely in his blog.

So is his work art, journalism, or a “lark” [his phrase] he's having with found footage? Three final thoughts on these contradictions:

– Curtis has been proud (as he should be) that his documentaries have gotten very good ratings when they've debuted on the BBC in prime time on weeknights. The UK is obviously very, very different from the U.S. Here, Ken Burns' more staid docus do run in prime time but on PBS, where they have a viewership of the folks who generally watch PBS: free-thinkers, usually liberal or left-wing; seniors looking for “something intelligent on TV”; those who still read as well as consume cable/Internet culture; and, yes, those dreaded intellectuals.

Curtis's work hasn't been released on DVD (in either the U.K. or the U.S.) because it contains footage that has not been “cleared” for other media. Thus the only way to see it as an American is to wait for it appear at a local documentary film-festival, catch it on the Internet, or be exposed to it by an enthusiastic friend with a collection of British television on DVD-r (or perhaps by a local cable host like yrs. truly).

In the process Curtis is developing a cult of admirers over here, made up of all the people he claims to disdain: intellectuals, Lefties, conspiracy theorists, pop-music cultists (those who can deal with a political narrative disrupting their favorite tunes), and cinephiles.

– The missing element in Curtis's work thus far is a positive statement about any school of political thought or a past movement that was on the right track. As I noted in the first part of this piece, artists are not responsible to offer solutions to social problems.

But if the artist states that his message is to show the viewer that he or she can “take control” of society and the media, some kind of direction should be indicated, if only by way of showing a historical movement that did work (as friend Charles pointed out, all historical regimes eventually “fell,” that's what history is all about). Possibly there is one solitary Utopian philosophy that Curtis believes can succeed? Perhaps the inclusion of this would make a “bridge” between the sytems-that-failed and the “you can take control” finales.

– The filmmaker who was able best to able to explore historical failures and still leave viewers with a sense they could “take control” was (wait for it) Chris Marker.

In his absolutely brilliant Grin Without a Cat (1977/88), Marker juggles several narrative strands about the political upheavals of 1968. He chronicles what was effective about the New Left and also what made things “go horribly wrong.” In The Last Bolshevik (1993), Marker explores a program that failed (a “film train” intended to introduce the production of art/entertainment to the average Soviet citizen), pointing out how it has left a legacy of promise for those who study it today.

And lastly, The Case of the Grinning Cat (2004) is Marker's last full-length video work (running only an hour). He shows us current protest movements and argues that today's “young people” are not apolitical, they just need to be stirred into action. It's a very moving work, and, yes, it does present Marker's favorite whimsical touches, including much doting on images of cats. (In interviews Curtis has noted he likes to "sneak" footage of animals into his docs, especially marmots.)
******

I look forward to seeing what Curtis will present us with in the next few years, but have no idea what to make of his filmmaking put-down shtick. Is he forging a brand, rehearsing for the eventual move to the Right that usually accompanies mid-life crankiness about the futility of political change, or simply being a contrarian on a much larger scale (and with the no-interviews-on-camera decision, again “nicking” from Marker)?

Only Curtis can answer the above questions, and the responses above delineate his position thus far. But I want to end this entry on an “up” note (well, musically at least). Thus I will close out with his trippiest work, the 2009 fantasia It Felt Like a Kiss. You can decide whether it qualifies as journalism, art, an op-ed essay, a lark, “pop trash,” or a serious social statement. I think it should be required viewing for Americans who like Sixties culture but who mostly avoid thinking about the tumult of the decade, and for those who are interested in seeing a kinetic way to assemble found footage.

But, then again, I'm a cinephile and an admirer of Curtis's work. I would think that, wouldn't I?

Adam Curtis, the contrarian documentarian (part 1 of two)

Viewers of the Funhouse TV show already know about my enthusiasm for the documentaries of Adam Curtis; I've done six shows featuring discussions of, and clips from, his work. I've become even more interested in the last few weeks in his very unusual, almost uncategorizable (and at points nearly inexplicable) political stance, as well as the fact that he maintains a dismissive attitude about his literally overwhelming visuals and his technical-yet-playful approach to filmmaking. He's an incredibly talented filmmaker who doesn't want to be called a filmmaker, an essayist who prefers to be identified as a journalist, and a stylist who puts down style in his interviews.

First a little background for those who are unaware of his name and his work. I was introduced to Curtis via short segments he did for Charlie Brooker's brilliant series of “Wipe” programs (Newswipe, Screenwipe, and the annual editions).

Curtis is a documentarian who has full access to the archives of the BBC and uses that access to fashion brilliantly edited films that are comprised of rare archival footage he has discovered, along with talking-head interviews he conducts and a deadpan narration he delivers (which has now been melded with his very Godardian – that name, don't mention that name to him! – practice of using on-screen titles to move his “story” along).

I have noted on the Funhouse TV show that he is without question “the anti-Ken Burns.” Whereas Burns is a reverent, extremely staid documentarian who works entirely on the flat, level plane of history, Curtis fills his essays (and yes, his telefilms are essays) with editorial commentary in the form of unique edits, the use of jarringly eye-catching footage, and his trademark narration in which he begins each film with the phrase “This is a story about...” and then at some point announces that “it all went horribly wrong...” (Or “but it failed completely...” You get the drift.)

He takes an attitude towards his stories (he “plots” his documentaries, sometimes juggling several strands of historical events) that is both deadly serious and refreshingly playful. I value his work most for the way that it “connects the dots” between what otherwise would look like very disparate events and locations. He also is the foremost 21st-century chronicler of regimes, political movements, and social systems that failed.

Thus when I showed scenes from his work on the Funhouse I received much email from viewers saying they really enjoyed his films, but as my presentation of the documentaries moved on chronologically, the word “depressing” began to creep into the reactions – his lively and superb use of pop music brings matters “up,” but the actual subject matter, and his laser-sharp emphasis (one might say obsessive) on systems and programs that failed, brings the viewer “down.”

I was certain while watching his documentaries that he was drawing on the pioneering work done by artists whose styles he seems to cite frequently – from Marker (whose Grin Without a Cat is the decisive precedent, minus the pop music and rapid-fire editing, for what Curtis currently does) and Godard (with the theme from Le Mepris showing up in two Curtis docus, and his frequent use of onscreen titling, a method that JLG made famous) to Mark Rappaport (whose discussion of sexual subtexts from Rock Hudson's Home Movies is mirrored in Curtis's terrific It Felt Like a Kiss) and Kenneth Anger, whose use of pop-rock music hangs over the work of everyone who uses “music-video” editing (most especially when they use the r&b and pop of the Sixties and mythologize – or, in Curtis's case, de-mythologize – those who made the music).

While I was correct in my perceptions about the work, as the films bear out everything I say above, I wasn't quite prepared for the man himself to denigrate “the art lot” and say that he has no filmmaking influences (the last time I read a very talented director saying that, it was Spike Lee at the moment he became a prominent filmmaker – in later years Spike's hubris faded and he went on record citing many direct influences on his filmmaking). I mean, I knew that Curtis was a political contrarian, but I had no idea how deep his contrarian instincts run....

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Before I get into the specifics of the ways in which Curtis apparently wishes to shut himself off from the world of cinema (while making works that clearly invite those comparisons), I should first discuss his recent show at the Park Avenue Armory, the overwhelming, wonderfully crafted “Massive Attack vs. Adam Curtis.”

The show is an immersive experience that I did enjoy, with the exception of a “you can change the world” finale that came literally out of nowhere, following in the wake of more expertly visualized “stories” from Curtis about things – movements/people's lives/political dreams – failing in spectacular and often tragic ways. I will discuss a lecture he gave about the show below, but suffice it to say that he underscored in the lecture that the true message of the show was indeed that the average person could “change the world.” (For 85 minutes it wasn't, then it was.)

Perhaps it is just the expert way that Curtis depicts things failing, but I have yet to be convinced by this message, both in the Massive Attack show and in the final narration of some of his telefilms. In the live show, it followed a literal spree of stories in which something “went horribly wrong.” Curtis also takes care to criticize Left and Right politics, and thus the obvious question remains: what can be done to save society when the whole political spectrum is seen to be corrupt?

Aside from this structural/philosophical problem, the show did for me what Curtis's documentaries have done: it overwhelmed with vibrant images and sound, the latter coming from both old recordings and the live MA band, who were absolutely wonderful (as were vocalists Elizabeth Fraser, formerly of the Cocteau Twins, and Horace Andy).

The two “stories” upon which Curtis rested his narrative were the tragic lives of the British pop-artist Pauline Boty (profiled in the wonderful 1962 time capsule “Pop Goes the Easel” by Ken Russell, which Curtis showed scenes from – it was unfortunate that Curtis didn't follow up “Unkle” Ken's example and left out images of her striking collage art [see right], thus relegating her to tragic “dollybird goddess” status) and a Siberian folk singer who dated a leading punk rocker and wrote a beautifully evocative anthem of despair (yes, there are a *lot* of wildly depressing elements in Curtis's work – then again, please keep in mind that I watch Cassavetes for enjoyment).

Here is the whole Russell docu. It is lively, vibrant, and brilliantly imaginative. It also shows “Swinging London” before the town began to officially swing (which would probably be dated as '65-'66):

Curtis proceeded to overlay on top of those two stories a number of other narratives from the second half of the twentieth century that, as is always the case with his work, did much to explain the political mess we're currently in (“we” being the world, not just the U.S.). The result – if you discount the upbeat and none-too-convincing end – was a fascinating, deeply troubling piece that “reorganized” history and found Curtis again “connecting the dots” in a profound way.

Viewer-friend Whit noted to me that his main objection to the show was that the event was designed so that immense video screens surrounded us on nearly all sides, and then Curtis used the screens to simply display one image over and over, with few variances (often the side screens might have a closer, somewhat digitally blurry view of the main image). What I liked about the show, though, was that Curtis once again enthusiastically used cinematic techniques to tell his stories (I now know he would openly reject the phrase “cinematic,” but often the art is more articulate than the artist).

The other element that was intoxicating was the powerful mix of music, which had the power to counteract the sadness engendered by the stories being told. At the shows' end, the Massive Attack crew, including the guest singers, received no final applause or introduction, presumably because they were intended to just be one element in the multi-media “assault” (attack?). They were visible through one of the screens, and their faces were prominently displayed on the screens in the front of the room whenever a vocalist did a number.

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Now onto the Curtis lecture that I attended, but first for “full disclosure” (much will be made about the notion of journalism below, so I don't hesitate to use that phrase): I did approach Curtis for an interview for the Funhouse TV show, but he informed me that he has a policy of not doing filmed interviews. A counter-offer of doing an audio-only interview went unanswered, but led me instead to some fascinating research on what he has said about his cinematic forebears in interviews. I offer information disclosed in the lecture and those other interviews below – again, in the spirit of journalism (or, as it could more properly be called both here and in Curtis's telefilms, “op-ed” writing).

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As an interlude here, I turn you over to the single-best intro (if you have a bit of time on your hands) to Curtis's work, his 2002 documentary miniseries The Century of the Self:

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Curtis's lecture took place on Sunday, September 29th at the Park Avenue Armory and was essentially a discussion of the “Massive Attack vs. Adam Curtis” show with clips (including items from prior Curtis docus and odd items like private photos of Boty's daughter that weren't included in the show). The audience was a classic Manhattan smart-chatty group who decided to debate the finer points of Curtis's politics and not the show itself (or his documentaries).

And what are Curtis's politics exactly? Well, a quote that is highlighted in his Wikipedia entry finds him siding with the Libertarian view, but when he speaks at length, one finds him, for lack of a better word, deeply annoyed at the way things have gone in the U.S., U.K., and Europe.

He has maintained in his documentaries that the social reforms put in place by liberals have all “failed” to change society for the better. Interestingly, though, he still takes the classically dreamy view – commonly associated with the Left – that the people can rise up and “take hold” of society, bringing about change through letting their voice be heard. This inconsistency in his political view hadn't bothered me when watching his documentaries, as I have become used to, and enjoy, his focus on systems-that-failed.

I also have always felt that it is not the artist's place to provide us with concrete solutions – if they shed light on problems in their work that is more than enough “clay” for us to work with. Costa-Gavras (someone I'm almost certain Curtis would distance himself from) made the point just this last week on an episode of Democracy Now – he maintained that filmmakers don't provide answers, they just ask questions.

But then there is the issue of whether Curtis is an artist. I would argue (I guess even with him) that he is, since he has chosen to put his journalism in the form of highly stylized telefilms that are loaded with cinematic editing techniques. Curtis himself said twice in the lecture (and I have since read it several more times) that he considers himself a journalist and not a filmmaker.

His work illustrates that he does indeed do an incredible amount of research on the “stories” he tells, but one is again confronted by the “package” he places them in. In his blog on the BBC site he writes extremely thought-provoking essays on political, social, and historical topics. He also provides scenes from rare BBC documentaries, or posts them in their entirety – his blog is definitely worth reading, and watching.

His documentaries, on the other hand, are sensory experiences that might indeed be “overlaid” on a basis of historical research, but one could hardly call a fantasia like It Felt Like a Kiss (2009), “journalism.” Reportage, no; essay and/or fun history lesson, yes.

In his telefilms his knack for editing runs wild – the talking-head interviews he conducts himself may be in the spirit of Errol Morris (he has even borrowed Morris' technique of including his final question in most of the segments he uses), but his penchant for musical montages and other “grace notes” remove his work from the journalistic sphere. Here, btw, is the only footage that I could find on the Net of Curtis on-camera, him hosting an interview with Errol Morris for the BAFTA folks:

To return to the lecture: I noted above that the audience in attendance was a classic Manhattan group of would-be intellectuals who, during a Q&A, raise their hands to state an observation rather than ask a question. If they do ask a question, they then expect to have a conversation with the speaker. They will also dote on certain things at the expense of others – in this case, they disputed the political contents of what Curtis had said, rather than in any way questioning him about his profession (perhaps none of them had seen the Armory show, and few if any had seen his telefilms).

I asked a question that was solely about his filmmaking, the simplest one of all – about influences. I recorded my question and his answer, losing only one (inaudible) part:

Q: “Are you influenced by people like Godard and Chris Marker in terms of your essay films, or even Kenneth Anger in terms of putting together music videos? Who would you consider your major filmmaking influences?”

A: “None of the above. [laughter]… I'm a journalist and I have a great belief in being simple and clear. I believe that you can take the most complicated ideas and make anyone understand them.”

At that point, Curtis acknowledged that “I think Jean-Luc Godard is quite fun,” saying he has liked his editing in the past (a dismissive gesture was made at this point, as if he were discussing a “guilty pleasure” he had to admit having sat through). He acknowledged he has probably used Godard's edits at times.

Back to the tape (when his voice was again discernible): “I'm actually influenced by writers and people who write about ideas. Editing is sort of like... I have real problems with the way a lot of avant-garde art is appropriated and used as a way to block people. I'm perfectly happy to go and steal an idea off an avant-garde artist and use it to make a television program that gets out to ordinary everyday people like myself.

“I never use the word ideology or existentialism, or the sort of terms they use. I believe in clarity. I believe that a lot of art isn't about clarity, it's about obfuscation. That's just me being populist, I'm sorry.”

And back it went to the broad-based political questions, from an audience of NYC liberals who were surprised that Curtis was so curtly dismissive of liberal and Left politics and social movements.

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To close off this part, I refer you to a gent who has put up the entirety of Curtis's very important 2004 documentary miniseries The Power of Nightmares on Vimeo. You can find the whole thing here, along with the 9/11 "truther" docu Loose Change. Curtis has put down "conspiracy theorists" in the past (most notably on his blog), so I doubt he'd be happy the two docus were put together. You can't choose your audience....