Event

Jean-Michel Frodon                        Nora Alter

Assembling Marker: A Conversation. Jean-Michel Frodon and Nora M. Alter

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 multifact work, and a vast retrospective exhibition including all his films and many of those he was inspired by. All this is opening at the Cinémathèque Française on May 2..

In conversation with Nora M. Alter, Jean Michel 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.

The evening will be presented and moderated by Nora M. Alter, Professor of Film and Media Arts, Temple University.

A leading expert in cinema, Jean-Michel Frodon is author or editor of multiple books including: L'âge moderne du cinéma français (1995), La Projection nationale (1998), Hou Hsiao-hsien (2005), Print the Legend, cinéma et journalisme (2004), Au Sud du cinéma (2004), Horizon cinéma ( 2005), Le Cinéma chinois (2005); Cinema and the Shoah (2010), Robert Bresson (2008), Gilles Deleuze et les images (2008), La Critique de cinéma (2008). Genèses, co-author with Amos Gitai and Marie-José Sanselme (2009), Le Cinéma d’Edward Yang (2010), Le Cinéma français, de la Nouvelle Vague à nos jours (2010), Assayas par Assayas  (2014), Il était une fois le cinéma (2014), L’Art du cinéma ( 2014), Que fait le cinéma? (2015), Le Monde de Jia Zhang-ke (2016), Cinemas of Paris (Co-editor with Dina Iordanova, 2016). He has been senior film critic for daily Le Monde (1990-2003), Editor in chief of Cahiers du cinéma (2003-2009) and he currently publishes his critic on the online newsmagazine Slate.fr and is Professor at Sciences Po. He is currently completely two major works on the late filmmaker Chris Marker: Chris Marker, l’exposition (co-editor with Raymond Bellour and Christine VanAssche, 2018), and Chris Marker, des mots pour des images. Commentaires 1952-2002 (co-editor with Raymond, 2018).

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This program is made possible thanks to the generous support of Temple University's Film and Media Arts, Slought Foundation, and University of Pennsylvania's Cinema & Media Studies and French & Francophone Studies.