Chris Marker’s groundbreaking ‘photo-roman’ condenses the cinematic medium into an experimental form, weaving together still-image montage and narration to evoke the cyclical flow of memory and vivid fragments of recollection. Without elaborate special effects, this world of speculative imagination traverses future and past, reality and illusion, using only image and sound. The film delves into memory, time, and the essence of existence, revealing how the power of imagination can expand the boundaries of cinematic storytelling.

*The September 16 screening will be presented as a joint screening: International Competition La Jetée, the Fifth Shot — View Film Information 

Chris Marker’s landmark science-fiction work is set in a post–World War III dystopia. Humanity’s survivors, driven underground by nuclear contamination, turn to time travel as their only hope. One man—haunted by the fleeting image of a woman’s face glimpsed on the observation deck of Orly Airport before the war—is sent back and forth between past and future.

Composed almost entirely of still photographs, the film turns the formal constraint of montage into a meditation on memory, history, and cinema’s relationship to time and movement. Made in 1962, in the immediate aftermath of the Algerian War, La Jetée invites interpretations that reach far beyond its science-fiction premise, resonating with the traumas of its own historical moment.

Presented here alongside Dominique Cabrera’s La jetée, the Fifth Shot.

• Cinematography Chris MARKER
• Edit Jean RAVEL
• Music Trevor DUNCAN
• Cast Jean NEGRONI