Chris Marker

Sans Soleil

"Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place"
T. S. Elliot

Cine ensayo, tal como en la literatura: se postula una hipótesis, se desarrolla y se concluye aceptando o rechazando la tesis.

Una manera de hacer cine en la que lo primordial no es contar una historia, en la que no hay una narrativa como tal que dependa de un conflicto central a solucionar. Una alternativa. Una preocupación del cineasta. El cine ensayo tiene un fin claro desde su preparación y lo mostrado consistirá en fungir como material de apoyo para sustentar o rechazar la tesis, dependiendo de lo que se desee y se sacara de contexto lo necesario a través de la edición, se manipulará la información, se censurará (y en este sentido es donde entra la parte ficcionalizada del cine ensayo) todo por la necesidad de encontrar las respuestas que desde un principio se buscaban.

Pienso: en lugar de guión un ensayo escrito como base. Pero el guión ya trae imágenes y sonidos en él, el ensayo no. ¿Cómo lograr la conversión del papel a la pantalla? No hay métodos definidos ni caminos pre-establecidos, las posibilidades son infinitas y sería mejor que continuaran así. Evitar manuales y pasos a seguir, dejar que la creatividad de cada autor (no defina) conceptualice su propia visión del cine ensayo.

Chris Marker es todo un personaje y en lo personal me tiene completamente impactada. Yo había visto un poco de su cine hace ya algún tiempo y me gustaba, sin embargo jamás me había sentado a investigar un poco sobre él. Después de haberlo hecho puedo decir con completa honestidad que es de los seres humanos más congruentes que conozco. Un director sin pretensiones, sin ganas de volverse millonario o de ser aclamado por la crítica, un director que no se reconoce a sí mismo como director, que decide no jugar el juego de la banalidad, que elige no ser parte del sistema y que lo logra a través de su indiferencia. Un genio del cine, sin más que agregar.

Sin sol. Y el mismo título nos lleva a la reflexión. ¿Qué significa estar sin sol? ¿Por qué un título como este para su documental? En honor al tema homónimo de Mussorgsky, explica Chris Marker. El sol es vida, es luz, es la confianza de un presente. Civilizaciones antiguas han temido que el sol decidiera no salir la mañana siguiente, le han ofrecido sacrificios para asegurar su satisfacción con la raza humana, siempre se ha conocido la importancia del sol. Sin sol es obscuridad, es miedo a no saber que puede estar delante de nosotros, es no conocer, no entender, es dificl acceso, es desconfianza. Es lógico que Marker haya decidido nombrar Sans Soleil una película que aborda el tema de la memoria, sobre todo cuando lo hace de la manera en la que él lo hace. Una memoria dinámica, cambiante, inestable, poco confiable, una memoria que se reinventa con cada instante, que se transforma con cada acceso a ella.

Voz en off como hilo conductor, aunque no siempre pareciera estar en concordancia con la imagen, haciendo una alusión a la relación que se desarrolla entre la memoria y los hechos reales. Hay que saber diferenciar, una cosa es la realidad, otra lo que percibimos de la realidad y una muy distinta lo que recordamos de la misma. El recuerdo pareciera ser volatil, en ocasiones resulta sencillo confundirlo con un sueño, con un deseo, con un anhelo. Como aclara Bergson en Materia y Memoria, la diferencia entre percepción y recuerdo no es de intensidad, sino de materia.

El pasado es lo que está hecho, el presente es lo que se hace. Uno no puede actuar sobre el pasado, pero puede actuar sobre sus recuerdos, sobre su relación con el pasado, puede decidir anclarse en él, modificarlo, superarlo o ignorarlo. Pasan los años y uno mismo va desechando los recuerdos poco significativos, al mismo tiempo que continúa idealizando con nostalgia los significativos.

Una cámara cambiante que pasa de neutra a ser superior, de inferior a masculina, y así constantemente. Una cámara que confronta a las personas que la miran. Una cámara que no voltea la mirada, que la sostiene y que reta, que demanda su derecho sobre la imagen del mundo. Una cámara valiente, curiosa, atrevida, emprendedora. Una cámara que explora y que no se conforma con lo que le muestran, que indaga en el interior, en la mirada, en lo que el ser humano reserva para sí mismo. Una cámara interesada en el ser humano.

Un montaje pensado, en donde la estructura no es lineal, sino poética. Un montaje que desafía al tiempo tanto como la memoria, y accede a este como mejor le conviene. Un montaje que utiliza al tiempo, que vuelve a él ya habiéndolo cambiado, que imagina y rememora sin hacer distinción alguna. Un montaje como el remolino de Hitchcock, como el eterno retorno de Nietzsche, pero que surge desde el exterior para concentrarse en el interior. De lo objetivo a lo subjetivo. De lo externo a lo interno. De la percepción al recuerdo. Un montaje que parece terminar en donde comenzó como un ciclo perfecto, pero que en realidad, si se analiza, no se trata de la misma imagen. Nuestra memoria la ha modificado.

Entrevista con Chris Marker, alias Sergei Murasaki, (su segundo nombre en su "Second Life" que es caracterizado como Guillaume su gato) efectuada vía "Second Life" en Abril 2008:

Iggy Atlas: Why is this conversation on SL [Second Life] rather than in RL [real life]?
Sergei Murasaki: I hope it’ll go faster.
IA: How did you come to have an exhibition on SL?
SM: Curiosity at first. Then it becomes addictive.
IA: How so?
SM: Have you read Adolfo Bioy Casares’s The Invention of Morel?
IA: No, neither of us have read it. Shame on us?
SM: Well, it’s nothing to be proud of. In any event, it’s exactly the world of that masterpiece that I came to find in SL.
IA: Can you describe it for us?
SM: A dream state. The sense of porousness between the real and the virtual.
IA: Actually, what has your experience been in this virtual world?
SM: An example: when Serge told me there’d be two of you, my REFLEX was, “We’ll need a third chair.” Which in reality would be stupid, but isn’t here.
IA: This island, the objects that are here, the Museum . . . Are you their creator and owner?
SM: No, I’ve never been the owner of anything. Some Viennese friends took care of putting it all together. They’re pretty neat folks.
IA: How much time do you spend on SL?
SM: Not an enormous amount, because I still have LOTS of work in RL. But if I could . . .
IA: If you could?
SM: I would retire here for good. Like Brando in Tahiti. There’d be fewer worries in terms of maintenance.
IA: How do you perceive the way in which this virtual space and its users have invented a life, an economy, a virtual commerce of things and monies?
SM: The whole commerce aspect of it I find just as boring as I do in real life. Besides, I don’t understand it at all. But then again, I don’t understand the economy of the real world to begin with . . .
IA: How does SL fit into the context of your artistic preoccupations?
SM: I don’t believe I’ve ever had “artistic preoccupations.” I’m a cobbler. This is supercobbling.
IA: What you’ve managed to cobble to date, when it was made, seems to have prophesized today’s technologies, almost as if it was conjuring them, don’t you think?
SM: You really ought to lighten up your vocabulary. “Artistic,” “prophesize.” None of this is like me in the least. I think I’ll stick to cobbling, with all that’s inherently honorable in artisanal undertakings.
IA: Doesn’t SL, and don’t all these new ways of communicating, let you indulge your proclivity for secrecy and mystery?
SM: It would seem if you’re not on TV all the time, then you have a proclivity for mystery. Let’s just leave it at that. Though I did like that a critic, who wrote about the Zurich exhibition, said I was “born to be an avatar.”
IA: Precisely. The choice of a pseudonym, your absence from the media, make so much sense in this enterprise, and the adopting of a new virtual avatar.
SM: Are there any real avatars?
IA: Masks?
SM: Ah, that’s something else altogether. Max Jacob used to tell the story of two Masks who made a rendezvous, having never seen each other, naturally. And when they removed their masks, surprise: “It was neither one nor the other.”
IA: Is an avatar or a pseudonym a mask for you? A way of creating a partition between your cobbling and what the rest of the world calls “a work,” “of art” . . . ?
SM: I’m much more pragmatic than that. I chose a pseudonym, Chris Marker, that is easy to pronounce in most languages because I intended to travel. You need search no further than that.
IA: But since then, you’ve created a character that’s universally considered to be an artist.
SM: I never much worried about how I was considered.

IA: The delocalized exhibition on SL is entitled “A Farewell to the Movies.” How should this farewell be interpreted?
SM: Please . . . It’s “A Farewell TO Movies.” An homage to Hemingway. A way of saying farewell to cinema, undoubtedly, but without exaggerating. The constitutional right to contradict oneself was inscribed in the charter Baudelaire drew up.
IA: From a farewell to arms to a farewell to films . . . Should we consider that film is an arm?
SM: Of course not. That’s simply a euphonic correspondance. You must never attribute so much intentionality to me.
IA: So . . . does cinema belong to the past?
SM: One can play with that idea. Godard does it very well. But he is a filmmaker.
IA: Have you never considered yourself a filmmaker?
SM: Ne-ver.
IA: What label would you prefer, then? Multimedia cobbler?
SM: Cobbler, definitely. Multimedia . . . well, that belongs to contemporary jargon.
IA: Will new technologies in some way modify your relationship to images, to sounds, and what you do with them?
SM: Of course. To be able to make a whole film, The Case of the Grinning Cat [2004], with my own ten fingers, without any external support or intervention . . . and to then go sell the DVDs I’d burned myself at the Saint-Blaise market . . . I confess, I felt triumphant. From producer to consumer, directly. No surplus value. Marx’s dream come true.
IA: Speaking of which, the exhibition mixes portraits of artists, images from older and more recent demonstrations, photos of political personalities. How would you define the relationship between your cobbling and what is commonly called ideology?
SM: I’m afraid what is commonly called ideology no longer has any relationship at all with its original defintion. To begin with, it was a ruse of war. Today, it’s merely a substitute for a war that doesn’t exist. But we could go on about this at length . . .
IA: Hasn’t your work always had a political dimension?
SM: It has been said to. Myself, to put it in a nutshell, I’ve always said that politics, which is the art of compromise—and thank goodness for that—in no way interests me. What does interest me is history. I would add: “Politics interests me to the extent it cuts a slice into history.” But I hate repeating myself.


IA: In films such as 2084, your work outlined a hypothetical future. Today, there’s talk of the end of ideologies, you’re saying farewell to films, Godard talks about the death of cinema, the real is no longer all there is . . . What has been eclipsed for you, even as other things have been born?
SM: Malraux had a wonderful formula, which curiously no one has taken up: “The thing that is born where values die, and that does not replace them.” The difficulty of these times is that before bringing in new ideas, we’d have to destroy all the simulacra that the century and its favorite instrument, television, have generated to replace everything that has disappeared. This is why I’m passionate about the new information grid, the Internet, blogs, etc. Inevitably, there’s some slag, but a new culture will be born of it.
IA: And what is the culture you see born of it?
SM: Our grandchildren will decide. All one can say is that “something” exists. And for now, that’s something. To say more would be fortune-telling, or politics.
IA: You were saying that SL recaptured the spirit of The Invention of Morel for you. What part of your films does SL recapture for you?
SM: The presence of Guillaume the cat, anyhow. Did you notice how he’s made himself entirely at home over here?
IA: Haven’t you played a part in that?
SM: That’s a common error. It’s difficult to explain it to anyone who hasn’t been a cat in a past life, as is my case. Guillaume’s personality imposed itself on my Viennese accomplices without my ever having to ask. You can ask them yourself. Cats, you know, have certain powers.
IA: The real occupies a preponderant place in some of your films, from Sans Soleil [1982] to Grin Without a Cat [1977]. When you’re here, don’t you miss it?
SM: I wouldn’t have described Sans Soleil as a film that was particularly subjugated to the real. But if you say so . . .
IA: We didn’t say “subjugated” . . .
SM: When the real is truly present, it has a tendency to subjugate everything else . . .
IA: What in the RL preoccupies you today?
SM: If you mean “truly today,” I find the adventures of the Olympic torch fascinating. The skit in San Francisco was the most magnificent piece of slapstick I’ve seen in a long, long time.
IA: And more generally?
SM: Well, when one hears that a fellow, John Paulson, made three billion dollars on the stock market, and that four hours away by plane, in Haiti, there are food riots, it yanks you back to harsh reality.
IA: How do you get your information these days?
SM: International press publications online, CNN and Al Jazeera in English, and my favorite channel, the Russian RTR Planeta. And I have my informants here and there. There’s also the twentieth arrondissement’s blackbird, who gives me updates on all the neighborhood gossip at five every morning.
IA: What is it that keeps you so interested in the world’s movements? So acutely alert to it all?
SM: Curiosity. That’s all. I’ve never felt much of anything else.
IA: What kind of film viewer are you today?
SM: Alas, alas, alas . . .
IA: Alas?
SM: I’d always professed that cinema was to be seen only in a movie theater, that television was to be used as a memory aid only. Shamefully, I have perjured myself, simply because I no longer have the time.

IA: What films do you watch?
SM: It’s pretty anarchic. I really like great American television series. You mentioned politics. Has there been anything as good as The West Wing?
IA: How about The Wire?
SM: I was going to mention it next. But there I’d say sociology rather than politics. Only, they should have English subtitles.
IA: What, apart from politics and sociology, fascinates you in the proliferation of these series today?
SM: First their actual cinematic quality. It’s where all the innovation and invention is taking place. On every level: the story, the editing, the casting, the sound . . . They’re ahead of Hollywood.
IA: It seems you share this passion for American TV series with one of your friends, Alain Resnais. Is it something you two have discussed?
SM: I suppose it goes back to our passion for comic strips.
IA: Do you continue to follow the work of your old acquaintances, such as Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, Jean-Luc Godard . . .
SM: Of course. Agnès is in the process of recording an interview with Guillaume . . . See what I told you?
IA: How would you present your life’s work, the sum of your cobbling, to a young person who didn’t know Chris Marker?
SM: I’d tell them to read The Invention of Morel.

Arriba Chris Marker filmando a Tarkovsky
en el set del Sacrificio para su documental
"A Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich."

" 'We do not move in one direction, rather do we wander back and forth, turning now this way and now that. We go back on our own tracks...' That thought of Montaigne's reminds me about something I thought of in connection with flying saucers, humanoids, and the remains of unbelievably advanced technology found in some ancient ruins. They write about aliens, but I think that in these phenomena we are in fact confronting ourselves; that is our future, our descendants who are actually travelling in time."

- Andrei Tarkovsky

Arriba Junkopia, corto realizado por Chris Marker, John Chapman & Frank Simeone, a partir de esculturas abandonadas en las playas de San Francisco por artistas visuales.

FUENTES:

• You Tube. Junkopia. 1981. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npn4zgMW25A
• UBUWEB. Chris Marker - Junkopia. http://ubu.com/film/marker_junkopia.html
• Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia. Sans Soleil. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sans_Soleil
• Chris Marker. Notes from the Era of Imperfect Memory. http://www.chrismarker.org/2009/05/vertov-was-my-teacher/
• The Criterion Collection - Online Cinematheque. Chris Marker's Second Life. http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1143