La Jetée is one of the most influential sci-fi films, perhaps best known for having inspired Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys. (Marker’s film was itself inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo). La Jetée comprises still photographs and traces an ultimately circular time travel experiment in a post-apocalyptic Paris. It plays here with Marker’s first documentary, co-directed with Alain Resnais and Ghislain Cloquet, Statues Also Die, which was banned in France for its critique of France’s colonial history.

La Jetée
DIRECTOR: Chris Marker. CAST: Hélène Châtelain, Davos Hanich, Jacques Ledoux, Jean Négroni (voice). 1962. 27 min. France. B&W. English. DCP.

Statues Also Die
DIRECTORS: Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, Ghislain Cloquet. CAST: Jean Négroni (voice). 1953. 30 min. France. B&W. French. 35mm.

All film screenings in The Path of the Cat: Chris Marker’s Centennial series are available here. 

Special thanks to Villa Albertine Los Angeles and The Institut français.

Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation.