A portrait and thematic rerun of one of the 20th century's greatest and most misunderstood filmmakers, Chris Marker.

Visions du Réel Film Market 2023 

Script

Ten years after the death of the iconic French filmmaker, this filmmaker, hopes to rediscover that unique sensibility against the uncertainty of the new century.
By returning to the places synonymous with those incomparable and unforgettable films.
From the cat cemetery of Sans Soleil, to the mausoleum of The Last Bolshevik. The caves of Level Five, to the rooftops of The Case of the Grinning Cat.

Ten Lives of a Cat attempts to rediscover the essence of Chris Marker's films by revisiting shooting locations, borrowing motifs and equipment, in order to create a portrait of the artist from a unique first hand experience. In making this film, my aim was not only to deepen my personal understanding of Chris Marker's work, but to reaffirm his position as a figurehead for a new generation of progressive, DIY, and experimental artists. Furthermore, I believe the film is representative of Marker's own artistic philosophy, which throughout his oeuvre advocated for the democratisation of knowledge, culture and artistic expression through technology. In this regard I believe Ten Lives of a Cat is a defining work about Marker, as ultimately it aligns much more closely with his personal artistic sensibility than most of the current discourse surrounding his work.

When I first discovered the work of Chris Marker, it felt like I had finally uncovered the missing link in starting to understand and piece together my own artistic sensibility. For as long as I can remember, I had been striving for something that could land somewhere between sincere and irreverent, personal and transcultural, retrospective but progressive... then suddenly, there it was. With an incomparable filmography, fully realized and fleshed out, with inconceivable complexity and depth.

Immediately, I set to watching, reading, buying, and downloading everything I could get my hands on. However, as it turned out, the haul I had imagined was not exactly what I got. Even just a few years ago, Chris's work and its broader surrounding critical dialogue, particularly in English, were mostly inaccessible.

It seemed ironic that such an exceptional and prolific artist, particularly one so deeply entrenched in the advent of DIY and digital art, could somehow be separated from its progression and evolution. That's when I decided to make this film. Not only to further my understanding of the artist and his work but also to reaffirm Chris Marker as a contemporary figurehead for progressive, DIY, and experimental art. Ultimately, by realigning his unique sensibility with the ambitions of a new generation attempting to find truth in the "Information Age."

😿 😿 😿

When I discovered Chris Marker in 2015, I quickly became fascinated and deeply inspired by his work and his unique sensibility. However, since I do not speak French, initially, I found it very difficult to locate much of his filmography, especially in English or with subtitles. I remember at that time his work was not available on any English VOD services, so I bought whatever DVDs or VHS tapes I could find, which were often hard to locate and expensive on the secondary market. I decided to create a YouTube channel purely to make his films more accessible than they had been for me, in order to allow more people to discover his incredible work that had so profoundly affected me. Over time, I began to correspond more and more with people discovering Chris through the channel. I thought it was only appropriate to try and respect his legacy by adopting the facetious and whimsical vernacular preferred by Chris in his early social media work, for example, in blog posts, Second Life, or with the program Dialector. In essence, to add a conceptual layer to the channel that hoped to further illustrate the intricacy and complexity of his work. While also bringing that sensibility into new contemporary platforms and creating a kind of meta-space for people to interact with Chris's memory. Throughout this process I also began using the 😿 emoji extensively, subsequently this has been co-opted by other Chris Marker fans and in a small way has started to enter his lexicon posthumously. 

😽  😽  😽