I’ve just braved acute asthmatic bronchitis (not my words) to get myself down to ACMI and back, and see the first part of Melbourne CTEQ’s 3-week Chris Marker mini-fest live. It has nothing to do with theatre whatsoever. In fact, his films are so essentially films, so deeply untheatrical, that I can recommend them on nothing but my own enthusiasm.
As for my enthusiasm, I have been waiting impatiently for these three Wednesdays since about April. Chris Marker’s films are the most uncanny collage of thought, image, free association, philosophical musing, travelogue, and they are felt, humane, deep and employing both sides of the brain the way no other films have ever done for me (indeed, as we have established tonight, they are the polar opposite of Asperger’s films like Napoleon Dynamite, aloof to everything but their own hipster specialness). Watching Sans Soleil, which may be my ever-favourite film, with its free-associative stream of images relating loosely (but certainly) to a stream of very interesting thoughts, is an experience I would very favourably compare to that of being completely inside another person’s head. And a very interesting person’s, too.
The entire three-week experience, if you are so bold, will cost you a meagre $20. FULL DETAILS HERE.
