Chris Marker, French filmmaker, poet, novelist, photographer, editor and multi-media artist, is the creator of what some view to be the most radical and influential science-fiction films of all time; La Jétte.

“THIS IS THE STORY of a man marked by an image from his childhood”

The film is composed entirely of still images, but through the careful choice of music, sound, voiceover and selection of images, it is still at once cinematic and illuminating in its style of storytelling.

The tale concerns a man who travels in time after the devastation of WW3 and is forced to confront his memories, the most significant of which is the image of a woman’s face – a memory from his childhood that predates the nuclear apocalypse: “the only peacetime image to survive the war.” It is composed of photographs taken with a Pentax Spotmatic, with a few archival ones wired in: bombed-out buildings and ruined cities to stand in for a post-apocalyptic Paris.

Watch the full version (29 mins) of the film here.