La Jetee (1962) / Sans Soleil (1983)

A Chris Marker double bill. La Jetee is a science fiction short that takes a man from the future back to his childhood in pre-apocalypse Paris. His ability to make contact with a woman he once glimpsed may be humanity’s last hope. The film makes use of still pictures to tell almost the entire story. It won first prize at the 1963 Trieste Film Festival and was the inspiration behind Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys.

Whilst Sans Soleil is Marker’s landmark avant-garde documentary which compiles exotic footage from across the globe to provide a collage of ‘the dreams of the human race’. A fictionalised cameraman provides commentary on the images through the letters he writes to a woman.

Special features:
• New, restored high-definition digital transfers, approved by director Chris Marker, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-ray
• Two interviews with filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin
• Chris on Chris, a video piece on Marker by filmmaker and critic Chris Darke
• Two excerpts from the French television series Court-circuit (le magazine): a look at David Bowie’s music video for the song “Jump They Say,” inspired by La Jetée, and an analysis of Hitchcock’s Vertigo and its influence on Marker
• Junkopia, a six-minute film by Marker, Frank Simone, and John Chapman about the Emeryville Mudflats (Blu-ray only)
• New English subtitle translations
• PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by Marker scholar Catherine Lupton, an interview with Marker, notes on the films and filmmaking by Marker, and more