Assembling Marker

Slought is pleased to announce "Assembling Marker," a conversation with film scholar and curator Jean-Michel Frodon, on Tuesday, March 13, 2018 from 6-8:00pm. The program will be presented and moderated by Nora M. Alter, Professor of Film and Media Arts at Temple University, and will begin with a special screening of ciné-tract n°1 (1968). It has been organized with Film and Media Arts at Temple University and Cinema & Media Studies and French & Francophone Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

When he died in 2012 at the age of 91, French filmmaker Chris Marker, left behind a vast studio overflowing with materials that he had collected throughout his life. These included newspaper clippings, books, writings, films, videos, photographs, and materials in other media. In addition, there were numerous computers and external hard drives. During the last decades of his life, Marker had worked without an assistant leaving his personal archive organized according to his own, at times, idiosyncratic principles.

Upon Marker's death, there were no direct heirs nor designees to manage his estate, preserve his legacy, and archive his materials. That task was taken up by the archives experts from Cinémathèque française, with the help and guidelines of a few devoted individuals including Jean-Michel Frodon and Raymond Bellour. The result of their tireless efforts and commitment is a double volume publication forthcoming this May, the most comprehensive exhibition ever dedicated to Marker's multifacted work, and a vast retrospective including all his films and many of those he was inspired by or that were inspired by him, opening at the Cinémathèque Française on May 2. In conversation with Alter, Frodon will discuss the experience and process of archiving Marker, editing his writings and preparing an exhibition-- all part of the process of making accessible the work of a deeply private person who vehemently disliked public life.