Remembrance of Things to Come

Remembrance of Things to Come is a typical Chris Marker film when it is as it should be. Poetic, a flow of images and very re-watchable. This film was made together with Yannick Bellon, daughter of photographer Denise Bellon (1902-1999). The film consists of Bellon's pictures from the midwar period, starting with the surrealist exhibition in Paris 1937. The photos are striking - some macabre (war casualties) and some beautiful. This period seems like a strange land today, but at the same time many things defining our time was concieved then.The flow of still pictures, the narrator track and the short length (42 minutes) reminds of La Jetee in style, but this is a documentary rather than fiction. As La Jetee and as Sans Soleil, Remembrance of Things to Come is very poetic and easy to watch and listen to, almost hypnotic. If you like Chris Marker's La Jetee and/or La Soleil, you will probably like this.There is only one narrator track in english (there must have been a french original, as on Criterions La Jetee disc). There is one extra material: a 26 minutes documentary by Bellon from 1950.

Bellon and Marker look at the trends in photography and art in the period before World War 2 including the first surrealist exhibition at the1937 Paris World's Fair to paint a picture of the two decades between 1935 and 1955,which includes the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War and the German Occupation,To conclude the film we have a bonus portrait of Colette, a writer and important presence in Paris.