Chris Marker was a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia and film essayist with his best known piece being La Jatee created in 1962. He has had some good credibility because of his abilities in his creative, and analysis aspects.

Mark was almost an ominous man, frequently refusing to do interviews or talking too much about his work. People have even debated on where he was even born, but it is known that he had joined the French resistance during WWII, and later in his life joined the United States Air Force. This was speculated as a lie but was later proven by Chris Marker’s journalism after the war, working for a number of companies in journalism, writing about political commentaries, poems, and film reviews. This led him to travel the world doing photography and journalism, eventually publishing his first novel. “His elusiveness was a tool for creation. It furnished him with freedom”. Clearly Mark was not a person for fame, as he didn’t give many interviews, which allowed him to peruse Directing and film making with a clear head, as it says he went with freedom.

La jatee

Marker became international after creating this short film which was made as a photomontage using up to 800 images that Chris had taken throughout the 26 counties he had been to over the years. The film is about a post-nuclear experiment in time travel, where a survivor is obsessed over distant and disconnected memories about a pier with the image being a mysterious woman and a mans death. The scientists in the “time travel” choose this survivor for their studies. The man travel back in time to contact the mysterious woman, but ends up discovering that the mans death at the pier was his own. This is supposed to reflect the fragility of memory and how possible it is to become destroyed and distorted.

About the filmmaker – Chris Marker

Chris Marker (29 July 1921 – 29 July 2012) was a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist who has been challenging moviegoers, philosophers, and himself for years with his complex queries about time, memory, and the rapid advancement of life on this planet. His best known film, La Jetée is one of the most influential, radical science-fiction films ever made, a tale of time travel.

Full film

A man is a prisoner in the aftermath a nuclear war, where survivors live underground. Scientists research time travel, hoping to send test subjects to different time periods “to call past and future to the rescue of the present.” They have difficulty finding subjects who can mentally deal with time travel, many of them go crazy or die. The scientists eventually settle upon the man, he has a key to the past because he has an obsessive memory from his pre-war childhood of a woman he had seen on the observation platform at Orly Airport shortly before witnessing a man die.

After several attempts, he reaches the pre-war period. He meets the woman from his memory. After his successful passages to the past, the experimenters attempt to send him into the far future. In a brief meeting with the technologically advanced people of the future, he is given a power unit sufficient to regenerate his own destroyed society.

Upon his return, with his mission accomplished, he discerns that he is to be executed by his jailers. He is contacted by the people of the future, who offer to help him escape to their time permanently; but he asks instead to be returned to the pre-war time of his childhood, hoping to find the woman again. He is returned to the past, placed on the observation deck at the airport. He is concerned with locating the woman, and quickly spots her. However, as he rushes to her, he notices an agent of his experimenters has followed him and realizes the agent is there to kill him. In his final moments, he comes to understand that the death he witnessed as a child, which has haunted him ever since, was his own death.

Société Jersiaise is an archive of photos that contains the History, culture, environment and language of Jersey. There is about 35,000 historical images archived here, some of their photos and information goes back further than 1873, which was the year it was founded. There is an extensive library there where the archive publishes books about the photos for people to get, handy for any historians on the island who want to learn more about the history of Jersey. They are currently celebrating their 150 year anniversary too. Their website and info about them and where they can be found, can be found here.

Photos of our visit to Société Jersiaise:

1. RESEARCH: Elizabeth Castle and decide which particular aspects of its 1000 year history you wish to make into a short film of 3-5 mins – see below. Gather together research material, such as images, maps, documents, links to online sources and write a short synopsis of 300-500 words.

Elizabeth Castle

Built on a rocky islet in St. Aubin’s Bay, Elizabeth Castle (a castle and tourist attraction) has defended Jersey for more than 400 years. Construction of the earliest parts of the castle, the Upper Ward including the Queen Elizabeth Gate, began in 1594. This work was carried out by the Flemish military engineer Paul Ivy. Sir Walter Raleigh Governor of Jersey between 1600 and 1603, named the castle Elizabeth Castle after Elizabeth I of England. The castle was first used in a military context during the English Civil War in the 17th century.

Plan:

The earliest known structure to be built on the two rocky outcrops on which the Castle was subsequently to be built was the Hermitage of St Helier, thought to have been founded as a monastery and oratory in 1155 but amalgamated with the Abbey of Cherbourg and downgraded to a priory in 1179.

For our film, Caitlin and I decided to base it around the life of St. Helier (Helierus), the man that lived in the hermitage that is now connected to Elizabeth Castle by a breakwater.

We want our film to have quite a dark, creepy and slightly gothic theme, including a narrator talking about the life of the saint and the legends and myths surrounding his story.

We want to focus on both the religious and mythical aspects of the saint, as I think both are important to make an interesting film about him.

WHAT ARE PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVES?

The archive or archives are a collection of documents and records that contain historical information. You can also use archives to refer to the place where archives are stored. – Collins Dictionary

JERSEY HERITAGE JERSEY ARCHIVE:

The Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive (SJPA) contains over 125,000 items dating from the mid-1840s to the present day. It is the Island’s principal collection of nineteenth and early twentieth-century photography and reflects a rich history generated from our geographical and cultural position between Britain and France, two nations that were prominent in developing the medium. 35,000 historical images in the Photographic Archive can we found on their website here.

27/09/2023 AT JERSEY ARCHIEVE:

WHAT HAPPENED ON THE TRIP:

We arrived at Jersey Museum for 8:45am, there we made our way up to the room where we received the talk by ‘The Gatekeepers.’ They gave us information on how to use the Jersey Archive website in order to help us for our short film project. He proceeded to digitally show us how to filter specific instruction in order to receive the best possible results. He was able to give us some information about Elizabeth Castle, where we were supposed to extend our trip, and showed us their archival prints of historical factors around the building.

IMAGES TAKEN:

OVERVIEW OF THE TRIP:

• They told the group of students useful historic facts about the origins on the Jersey Heritage and how it became an archive and a photographic archive known as ‘SJ Photographic Archive‘
• Showed and taught us how to use the Jersey Heritage website and how to filter and modify the filter in order to get to the SJ Photographic archive, furthermore able to find images you need.
• Told us the necessary needs your photographs need to fit in order from them to be publish to the archive eg what historic value do they have to society?
• Showed us printed images from their archive in the building (printed copies of photos that also found digitally online, some are original and not found online)

EXHIBITION – NO PLACE LIKE HOME

The exhibition took place in the Capital House where many project were displayed for, No Place Like Home.

A floating sculpture of the Earth was situated in the Queen’s Valley Reservoir by artist Luke Jerram between 14th and 24th of September and this was a part of the exhibition. This was to spread awareness about climate change and how it is affected the Earth.

QUOTES FROM Mr Jerram:

“I created the artwork to keep this subject on the agenda and also show people what we could lose.”

“Our floating blue planet is just incredibly beautiful and fragile.“

“It will also make people realise what public art can do and it can reach out to people in lots of different ways“

“It was really nice to see the Floating Earth in Jersey with ducks and swans swimming around, which means they weren’t scared of it; which is nice.”

SOURCE: BBC NEWS

RESEARCH ON: post-war tourist attraction, current site of Jersey Heritage and living history.

ELIZABETH CASTLE INFOMATION

https://www.jerseyheritage.org/visit/places-to-visit/elizabeth-castle/

The castle is located on a tidal island within the parish of Saint Helier, Jersey. You are able to reach the castle by walking along the causeway or by taking the amphibious Castle Ferry. The castle is a 15-acre fortress that gave refuge to King Charles II during the English Civil War. It also has many historical aspects dating from; including the English Civil War, the German Occupation in World War 11. The other past of the site is, The Hermitage, where Saint Helier is thought to have lived around 550 A.D.

The spot where Elizabeth Castle is located, the Upper Ward or Mount, was a religious priory from 1155 until the late 16th century. The Islet, as it is known, is half a mile out to sea and is connected to mainland Jersey at low tide by a causeway. So, for seven out of every 12 hours it can only be reached by boat.

TOURIST ATTRACTION ELIZABETH CASTLE:

Elizabeth Castle is now managed by Jersey Heritage as an act to the public service, including as a tourist attraction. At Elizabeth Castle, as well as exploring the site and its history, you can see regular musketry demonstrations and on some weekends there are live recreations of the garrison of 1781 – the time of the battle of Jersey – when historical Interpreters give displays of musket and cannon firing and civilian life.

SYNOPSIS:

The short film we will be producing at Elizabeth Castle will be about the post historic events and the tourist attractions. The short film will include pictures of the main historic parts such as the; canons, the structure of the castle, and the main outside area (the layout). This short film is to show the evolution of the castle and how it once gave refuge to King Charles II and has now become open to the public and marked as one of the most historic elements on the island.

PRICING:

MOODBOARD:

CRITIQUE:

This project overall has been the best I’ve created. The whole process of taking the images, editing, and then creating a zine showed me all the work that goes into creating something like this. By going to St.Malo it created a new area for new images and a different lifestyle and culture than Jersey which meant I was able to take images I would usually be able to take. I am delighted by the way the zine looked in its finally copy, and impressed with how the layout turned out. Overall I conclude that the images worked really well together and how well the quality of these images displayed on print. Regarding the layout I am satisfied that I separated the two locations by adding the landscape image between, it created this sense of a storyline in my zine with the travel between two locations. However to make this zine better in the future I will perhaps add text next to my images to describe what is going on and what they represent, in this nostalgia project.

It is a French science fiction film made in 1962, directed by Chris Marker. It is put together by nearly just still photos and audio, where a story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel is told in French. It is monochrome and 28 minutes long, winning the Prix Jean Vigo for short film.

It is cleverly constructed because it uses dramatic black and white images to tell the story. It is inspiring to know that a film can be created from still images and not only video, using audio as the storyteller. We will take into consideration this strategy for filmmaking with our film. We will try to get some dramatic shots that tell the story we want to tell through stills.

Task

RESEARCH: Elizabeth Castle and decide which particular aspects of its 1000 year history you wish to make into a short film of 3-5 mins – see below. Gather together research material, such as images, maps, documents, links to online sources and write a short synopsis of 300-500 words.

Research

Saint Helier:

The main town of Jersey is named after a Belgian monk called Helier.  He set up home in a cave on the high rock, which was later incorporated into the chapel, that was built in the 12th century, which now bear the names Hermitage Rock and Hermitage Chapel. Helier was killed by marauding pirates from Normandy in AD555 and later made a saint.

Military background:

Royalist forces held the Castle during the English Civil War when a mortar shell fired by Parliamentarian forces in St Helier crashed through the Priory roof, exploding 12 barrels of gunpowder stored there, badly damaging the building.

The first attempts to construct defences on the islet where Elizabeth Castle stands, were in 1550 and 1551, when orders were issued to build a gun battery to be garrisoned by six gunners. It is not clear, however, whether these works were ever undertaken or completed.

By the 16th century, cannon and gunpowder had become the dominant weapon of war. By the end of the century the principal castle on Jersey, Mont Orgueil, was out of date and vulnerable to bombardment from Mont St Nicholas. A new site was chosen on the small islet in St Aubin’s Bay and a new castle was built. Sir Walter Raleigh, who was Governor of Jersey between 1600 and 1603, chose the name Elizabeth Castle, after Queen Elizabeth I, and the name has been retained ever since.

Nazi’s invasion:

Elizabeth Castle remained in use up to and including the Second World War, when it was occupied by the Nazis. The occupation by the German forces commenced on 1st July 1940 and eventually ended on 9th May 1945 – Liberation Day. However, Elizabeth Castle was not handed back to the Island by the military until 19th May 1946. During this period the island was heavily fortified using Organisation Todt construction workers from various parts of Europe, including Russia and Spain.

Film research

Plan:

Final idea:

For our film, we decided to focus it on Saint Helier and his life. We plan to record the places where he is said to have lived, as well as locations he has said to have been, such as the hermitage rock. While showcasing the locations we plan to input a script explaining the details of his life from birth to death.

A main part of our plan is to try and create a somewhat spooky or unsettling atmosphere to captivate the audience by incorporating eerie music (dramatic church organs etc.) and using sound effects to emphasize certain points of the script.