Details here for a 2 disc offering with voice over by Jim Broadbent and Cyril Cusak - so I guess the English dub is there.

Pity they didn't see fit to include Le Jolie Mai as well as it sort fits the theme.

I got a copy of Marker's 2001 film Remembrance of things to Come from a friend. It's from a DVD issued by Icarus and they charge 390 dollars for institutional use only! Quality is great and it has english V.O.

The French DVD edition could be better (letterboxed and lots of jagged edges). But it's a film worth seeing in any form - rich, fascinating visual poetry. The voiceover in the French edition is that of actor Pierre Arditi. The English version, I think, has Alexandra Stewart - who did the English voice for Sans Soleil, of course.

I see that the Spanish box, mentioned a couple of pages back in this thread, is now available.



Contents are:

Disc 1: La Jetée & Le Souvenir d’un avenir (Remembrance of Things to Come) - both with the French voiceovers (and Spanish subs). Good pairing!
Disc 2: Sans Soleil (French voiceover)
Disc 3: Le Tombeau d'Alexandre (about Aleksandr Medvedkin)
Disc 4: Schastye (by Medvedkin)

It looks like the set is simply bringing to Spanish viewers what's already available in France.

Am I right thinking it's only available in the Coffret intégrale Yanninck Bellon ??

If you know of an alternative way could you say or alternatively if you have the box set is it a good investment?

Souvenir is on the Bellon two-discer L'Amour nu & L'Affût, which can be bought on its own for about 20 Euros.

Alapage. Amazon.

Amazing news posted on Masters of Cinema about several new Chris Marker films being available in the US - some immediately, others for pre-order:


Link to the e-shop

Sweet! More Marker in America! I hope they can get A Grin Without A Cat.

Since First Run/Icarus has the rights in North America and they seem to have negotiated a port of the Arte release of The Last Bolshevik, it seems safe to assume that Grin Without a Cat (which Arte is releasing in France in April) will come out here in the next year or so.

Go Wexner!!! It'd be great to see the FRIF catalog slowly open up a little to commercial markets. I imagine there are very good reasons for their institutional sales model, but maybe after a certain period of time, it makes sense to roll out home consumer pricing (on the notion that most interested universities, libraries, etc. have already purchased their copies).

If this goes well, who knows, some Akerman, Rouch, etc. may be available down the road. Chantal Akerman, notably, has a similar track record with the Wexner Center, so who knows.

In any case, I'll be buying some Chris Marker DVDs this year!

I've ordered Case of the Grinning Cat, Sixth Face of the Pentagon, and Remembrances of Things to Come. I had some problems with placing my order (shipping charges came up well above what they should be) but the Wexner customer service dealt with things quickly and forthrightly. Between these and the Arte disks, the available Markers have sure come along way from a year or two ago. Hopefully we'll see Lettre de Siberie soon.

Yeah, no kidding. I figured there would eventually be some Marker coverage, but really, never beyond my wildest dreams would I have guessed that a film like Sixth Face of the Pentagon would be on a commercially-available DVD already. Truly, we've been blessed. I've been able to add some favorites to my shelf and, more importantly, I've had the opportunity to see a couple more Marker films for the first time. It's an awfully good time to cultivate an interest in this filmmaker.

That's the cover... Confirmed that 6th face and L'Ambassade will be on it.

More info, including extracts from the booklet by Marker himself!

Films included:

À bientôt j’espère
de Chris Marker et Mario Marret 16mm/45’/noir et blanc/©1967 Slon-Iskra
Produit pour le magazine de l'ORTF CAMERA 3 par Henri de Turenne et Philippe Labro,
réalisé par Roger Benamou et diffusé le 5 mars 1968 © Ina 1968
En 1967, une grève d'un nouveau genre (occupation, revendications de fond, animation culturelle) éclate aux usines Rhodiaceta à Besançon. Le reportage est jugé inacceptable par l'ORTF qui l'interdit. Au terme d'un intéressant affrontement, il passe quand même, flanqué d'un "débat" entre gens sérieux, qui ajoute au pittoresque de l'aventure, et qu'on trouvera ici pour la première fois.

Puisqu’on vous dit que c’est possible
Organisation et montage : Chris Marker 16 mm/43’/couleur/©1973
Cinq ans après mai, les ouvriers de Lip se lancent dans une folle entreprise d'autogestion qui
a un retentissement immédiat. Mais la guerre entre les syndicats risque de paralyser le travail de Roger Louis dont la coopérative Scopitone a amassé une documentation considérable. Pour détourner les coups, il demande à C.M. de prendre la responsabilité du montage.

2084 de Chris Marker
35 mm/10’/couleur/©1984 La Lanterne
Réalisé avec le Groupe Confédéral Audiovisuel CFDT
Le sujet devait être “un siècle de syndicalisme”. Difficile de faire tenir cela en dix minutes.
Mais deux siècles, qui sait ?

La sixième face du Pentagone de Chris Marker et Francois Reichenbach
16 mm/27’/couleur ©1967
Les films du jeudi/Les films de la Pléiade
Le 21 octobre 1967, une gigantesque manifestation a lieu à Washington DC contre la guerre au Viêt-nam. Le mot d'ordre "action directe" se donne pour but d'occuper symboliquement les bâtiments du Pentagone, considérés comme le coeur de la machine militaire. Le film suit cette action pas à pas.

L’ambassade (film anonyme)
super-8/22’/couleur/©1975 Slon
En ce temps-là, il arrivait qu'en cas de coup d'état, des opposants politiques se réfugient dans les ambassades.

I'm very excited about all the new Marker releases, but I'm more than a little confused as to what's available in English-friendly formats.

For example, are the French and Spanish releases with English narration or subs? Are they ported over to the US/Wexner titles? Has anyone seen the US/Wexner titles, and if so are the of decent quality or improperly converted ports of PAL-format discs?

I apologize for all the queries, but I'm having a good bit of difficulty sorting these out... and thankful that there are so many to be sorted out!

I've been satisfied with the quality of the US disks, although the Case of the Grinning Cat was shot on cheap video, and The Embassy on 8 mm (with Pentagon on 16) so how bad could they possibly look? I haven't noticed any unsightly digital artifacts or combing.

What a pleasant surprise it was for me to find that the Wexner Center was the sole retailer of these disks. Its about a fifteen minute hike away from my apartment.

The Wexner disks are great - both the Case of the Grinning Cat and Last Bolshevik are as good as the Arte Video versions (though I wish that Case had the French audio as well).

My only complaint about the Wexner disks (an this is a very minor point) is that the voice-over on the Embassy is a bit quiet/muffled. But regardless I'd definitely recommend all of them. Plus the service from Wexner is really impressive, even to Canada.

And thanks Eriol for posting those descriptions.

For the Europeans here, Arte is showing the new edit of Le fond de l'air est rouge on the 15th of april, along with some other stuff on May 68.

It will also be shown theatrically in Antwerp (Muhka_media) on the 19th of may.

Does the the Wexner disc of Last Bolshevik have the french voice over with eng subs?

I'm actually more interested in the Arte disc than the Wexner ones, largely because it is much cheaper. Does anyone know if it will include English subtitles?

The Arte disk of Last Bolshevik has both English v/o and subs along with the French. And the special features also have English subs as does Medvedkine's Happiness. I would definitely choose the Arte disk, if it is cheaper and as it is otherwise the same as the Wexner.

Is there any sort of booklet included in the Wexner disc of Last Bolshevik?

That's definitely true for The Last Bolshevik, but I'm wondering if it is also true for the new Marker 60s set. I haven't been able to locate any site that definitively states whether the films will have subtitles or not, so I suppose we may have to wait a few weeks to find out.

No booklets in any of the US discs.

More on Grin Without a Cat

According to the ARTE shop it's region-free (all other shops say PAL, but they are the ones releasing it), and has French subs for the 'original language', so it's still not clear wheter it has an English track or it's just the French one with all the foreign language interviews.

My first thought was that it would have to be the 180m 1992 version, which I believe was only in English (with Jim Broadbent's v/o). However, I just perused the Arte site a bit, and it seems like this is a new version of the film as the tv broadcast is listed as 1977/2008 3 hrs. Plus there is a link to a clip from the film, that features Simone Signoret's French v/o. Here it is.

So I suspect we're getting a new French version, though perhaps it will also include the English track, like Le Tombeau d'Alexandre (this seems possible since it is region-free too, unlike Arte's other Marker disks).

I just looked at the 2-disc set of HAPPINESS/THE LAST BOLSHEVIK. It's a nice package, and I'm happy to see Medvedkin's wonderful film on DVD at last. I have one gripe, and it's not a minor: it's a silent film, and the title cards are in French and not in the original Russian. I would assume the translations are correspondingly based on the French.

If you want the original Russian titles, they're on the old Kino VHS of HAPPINESS (part of their "Red Silents" series).