Week 2: La Jetée

I dont know how conincidental this is, but on the Monday that was my New Communication Technologies lecture, our lecturer decided to present this french short film by director Chris Marker. The film possessing a sci fi genre is based on post apocalyptic paris where an imprisoned man travels through past and future time. What I wasnt aware of until researching this film for this post is that Chris Marker on the 29th of July had sadly passed away at the age of 91. So, in memory of him I decided on writing a little post on the film he directed called 'La Jetée'.
After the world war III,  a completely deserted land remains where the only connection to the past is through invaluable and fragile memories (Fort, 20120). Through these memories it was believed that one could travel into the past however finding subjects was dificult (Fort, 20120). The main character in the short film, a prisoner in a underground concentration camp is chosen by authorities to be apart of such groundbreaking technologies  (Fort, 20120). Haunted by two polarisig moments in his childhood of beautiful woman by a pier and witnessing the death of a stranger he travels back to his childhood to find the woman he had dreamed of since his youth  (Fort, 20120). Once the authorities were done exploiting the prisoner for his memories, the man meets humans from the future who tell him that they are able to grant him another chance to meet the love of his life (Fort, 20120). As he travels back into time he finds her staring off into the ocean as he had originally seen her (Fort, 20120). Running towards her he finds an agent near the end of the pier in the exact place where he had witnessed a shooting, and soon he realises that he is the stranger that died in front of his younger self  (Fort, 20120).

This film has inspired a vast amount of films through its creativity and imaginative story line. A report from The Courier Mail reported that "Many critics count Marker, with his experimental documentary style, as among the most influential French filmmakers of the post-war era. His 1962 classic La Jetee - a 28-minute post-apocalyptic movie comprised almost entirely of stills - is often ranked among the best time-travel films ever made." (Jenkins, 2012)
R.I.P Chris Marker, 1921-2012

References:

Fort, Jeff. "Only (a) Memory Can Save Us Now? The Instant of Death in Chris Marker's La Jetée and Maurice Blanchot's L'instant De Ma Mort." Taylor and Francis Online. N.p., 31 Aug. 2010. Web. 5 Aug. 2012. http://www.tandfonline.com.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/doi/full/10.1080/17409292.2010.500910.

Jenkins, Steven. "Famed Director of La Jetee Dies." Couriermail.com.au. N.p., July 2012. Web. Aug. 2012. http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/breaking-news/famed-director-of-la-jetee-dies/story-e6freoo6-1226438967391.
Annotation: I did not fully understand Jeff Fort's article on La Jetee. I found the article confusing and it did not analyse the film as well as had hoped for. The article was good for a summary of the film but not much else unfortunately.