Letter to Theresa by Chris Marker – Behind the Veils of Sans Soleil — Notes from the Era of...

17.10.13 13:48Letter to Theresa by Chris Marker Behind the Veils of Sans Soleil Notes from the Era of Imperfect Memory

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Letter to Theresa by Chris Marker Behind the Veils ofLetter to Theresa by Chris Marker Behind the Veils ofSans SoleilSans SoleilAugust 19 Year: UnknownOriginal: Fax

Dear Theresa (and all the gang),

Dont apologize: perhaps one thousand people wished to ask me these questions, but I never gave them a chance to ask.In fact, the only opportunity where I was in a position to talk about Sans Soleil (I note that, in spite of me putting in the filmitself the three titles of the Mussorgsky songs cycle, in Russian , in English SUNLESS and in french, people inUS always preferred to use the latest so in turn one question from me: how come ? does it sound that exotic ?) was at theSan Francisco Festival, after the screening, but I managed to brush aside too direct questions. Nothing nasty, just thedeliberate intention to leave the film in a mist, in order that viewers let their imaginary forces work as the Chorus says inHenry V. Now perhaps its about time to bring some clues, and anyway all this will remain between us, wont it?

The. only question I confess being unable to cope with is your last: Why? If I knew (if we knew) why things are done, thisworld wd look quite different. Ill just try to deal with the How ? And for that, the best is perhaps to give you an account ofevents, starting with the films release. First, the text I distributed to the press and professionals :

THE STORYTHE STORY

An unknown woman reads and comments upon the letters she receives from a friend a free-lance cameraman whotravels around the world and is particularly attached to those two extreme poles of survival , Japan and Africa(represented here by two of its poorest and most forgotten countries, even though they played a historical role : GuineaBissau and the Cape- Verde Islands). The cameraman wonders (as cameramen do, at least those you see in movies) aboutthe meaning of this representation of the world of which he is the instrument, and about the role of the memory he helpscreate; A Japanese pal of his, who clearly has some bats in the belfry (japanese bats, in the form of electrons) gives hisanswer by attacking the images of memory, by breaking them up on the synthesizer. A filmmaker grabs hold of thissituation and makes a film of it, but rather than present the characters and show their relationships, real or supposed, heprefers to put forward the elements of the dossier in the fashion of a musical composition, with recurrent themes,counterpoints and mirror-like fugues: the letters, the comments, the images gathered, the images created, together withsome images borrowed, In this way, out of these juxtaposed memories is born a fictional memory, and in the same way as



Lucy puts up a sign to indicate that the Doctor is in , wed like to preface this film with a placard: Fiction is out somewhere.

Then followed detailed biographies of the protagonists -Sandor Krasna, cameraman, born in Kolozsvar, Hungary, in 1932,doing his first short film (Erdlyi Tncok) at the Budapest Film School, fleeing Hungary in 1956 for Vienna first, then Parisand USA, and finally settling in Japan. Michel Krasna, his younger brother (Budapest, 1946), studying music at the Kodalyschools, joining Sandor in California but finally choosing Paris to compose film music Hayao Yamaneko, the video-artist(born Nagoya, 1948), art activist during the Sixties, learning film and electronics at the Nihon Taigaku in Tokyo, artist inresidence in Berkeley after his short Boku no shi wo kimeta noha dareka? -and Chris Marker, amateur filmmaker. It was inBerkeley -at PFA, to be precise- that Krasna, Yamaneko and Marker met (said the blurb) and from then on the Sans Soleilproject originated.

So the scene was set to create. confusion, and reactions were interestingly chaotic. I knew some people wouldnt payattention : they see a movie, they dont care about who did what. Others, more familiar with my works, would identify mystyle in the letters and assume I had done the principal photography (you girls shouldnt ask if I shot all of the footage :the final credits are quite clear for attributing at least what I didnt shoot). But I was aiming at the center of the target :people unfamiliar enough not to take for granted that I was the unique author, and yet clever and curious enough to raisequestions about letters and shooting. You proved you belong to that category. So I guess its only fair to give you a honestanswer : yes, all four characters, even the fourth, amount to be just one, namely your humble servant. But you shouldntthink all that was just a game, or a series of private jokes. I had good reasons -or so I thought- to devise that crooked set-up. Here they are :

For Michel Krasna the musician, a simple case of good manners. I hate seeing one name more than once on the credits(you know a picture by Jonathan Rumble.fish, after an idea by Jonathan Rumblefish, scenario and dialog by JonathanRumblefish, edited by Jonathan Rumblefish, etc, I see it as extremely pedestrian. So even if I frequently do my ownmusic, I would have felt preposterous to sign it along my directors credits. So I invented Michel, and I established aparental link with Sandor in order to give more flesh to the parallel story.

Hayao Yamaneko was more meaningful. I was very conscious of the limitations that plagued the first image synthesizers,and inserting these images in the editing, like that, could create some misunderstanding, as if I boasted this is modernitywhen those were the first stumbling steps on the long road that would lead to the computerized and virtual world. I justwanted to stress the point that such images were possible, and would change our perception of the visual -in which Iwasnt totally wrong. So I thought of a fictional character, Hayao Yamaneko, technaholic and treated with some irony, todeliver the message. without solemnity. Naturally again those who knew something about Japan and myself, asyamaneko means wildcat, could have suspected something, er fishy, but most people didnt. I even had some smallgratifications about both my characters, when folks congratulated me for using Michel Krasnas music -someone they hadspotted since long- and some others remembering clearly having seen Hayaos works in Japan. Such anecdotes make myweek.

As for Sandor Krasna, I suppose you caught the idea, which was to use some degree of fiction to add a layer of poetry tothe factuality of the so-called documentary. From the start I had always refused the omniscient, anonymous voice ofthe classical travelogue, and I had bluntly used the first-person. For that I was sometimes reproached, accused ofpretension. I sincerely think thats wrong. If you allow me to quote myself, this is how I put it (in Level Fives pressbook) inan interview with Dolores Walfisch for the Berkeley Lantern (the what ? Come on, now I guess youre familiar with myfantasies) I use what I have got. Contrarily to what people say, the use of the first person in films tends to be a sign ofhumility: all I have to offer is myself. Also I loved the form of the letter, for the freedom and flexibility it allows. Letterfrom Siberia was a real letter, addressed to a real person. But I didnt wish to lock myself in such a system, and I came toconsider that a fictional character could bring a more interesting dimension. Then the idea of having another voice, that ofthe addressee, establishing a new distance. The audience would be free to imagine whatever they wanted between thosetwo, in a more creative way than if I had told their story myself. And funnily the real starter was grammatical, when Irealized that I would rather use the past tense instead of the present. He writes me He writes me didnt give me therhythm I longed for. When I phrased for the first time He wrote me the last obstacle fell, and the. text came fluently,leaving me the luxury to turn back to the present tense at the.very last paragraph of the film, thus establishing a newfrontier in time, and the possibility for the viewer (or rather then for the listener) to identify differently with the Voice, itselffrom then on provided with a future : Will there be a last letter? (With Level Five, I went one. step further, by establishingthe physical presence of one of the correspondents, the woman, but this time shes the one who writes -and myself asthe exterior witness. Im not sure that I was fully understood.)

I dont know if this answers really your questions, but at least you have an idea of the process. On a more matter-of-factlevel, I could tell you that the film intended to be, and is nothing more than a home movie. I really think that my main talenthas been to find people to pay for my home movies. Were I born rich, I guess I would have made more or less the same



films, at least the travelling kind, but nobody would have heard of them except my friends and visitors. Camera was a little16mm Beaulieu with 100 feet reels, silent (which means noisy) -the sound was made separately on one of the first smallcassette recorders (not yet the Walkman), there isnt one synch take in Sans Soleil. I was naturally alone from beginning toend, but with some exceptions thats my usual way to work. I couldnt find the words to explain: to an editor, forinstance, operations that come instinctively to my mind when Im at the editing table. The 16mm editing was transferred on35mil for theater release. The shooting extended from 1978 to 1981, following haphazardly my alternate trips to Japan andBissau (where I helped to build a cinema/video training center whose results were utterly destroyed this year by the civilwar there, but thats another story) and I couldnt tell at what moment these bits and pieces started to shape up into a realmovie, that also belongs to the mysteries of existence.

Oh, and did the film change me ? Well, perhaps you remember the moment when I mention the Year of the Dog. I was justsixty then, which means that the different combinations between the twelve animals of the year and the four elementshave been exhausted, and youre in for a brand new life. I didnt realize that when I began, but at that moment Iunderstood that the whole film was a kind of exorcism for sixty years on this dubious planet, and a way to take leave ofthem. You could call that a change.

Chris Marker c/o KMS 5 rue Courat 75020 PARlS Fax (331) 4009 9525 [email address redacted - ed]

Thanks to Emiko Omori for sending this wonderful document. Though it pulls back the curtain on some of the mysteries ofSans Soleil, I felt it ultimately too compelling and could not refrain from reproducing it here, for which I take the blame. blind librarian

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