Abstract

Director: Chris Marker. Starring: Catherine Belkhodja. France 1997. 104 mins. French and Japanese with English subtitles.

This is a one-off opportunity to see a rarely shown film by enigmatic French director Chris Marker. Best known for LA JET ÉE (1962), an apocalyptic time travel tale (the basis for Terry Gilliam’s TWELVE MONKEYS ), Marker has developed a unique approach to documentary, as seen in SUNLESS (1983), which weaves together images from Africa and Japan in a series of letters from a fictional cameraman.

LEVEL FIVE brings together many themes evoked in these earlier films, in a remarkable exploration of memory and commemoration in the age of the internet. It investigates the horrific battle of Okinawa in 1945 through the framework of a fictional narrative about a French woman gathering documents and witness accounts while coping with bereavement.

The screening will be introduced by Isabelle McNeill, author of Memory and the Moving Image: French Film in the Digital Era (EUP 2010) and is presented by the Cambridge Film Trust in association with the Mphil in Screen Media and Cultures, University of Cambridge.

Bookings: http://www.picturehouses.co.uk or 0871 704 2050