Sans Soleil

Apologies if this has been mentioned on another thread [or if it should be somewhere else] but I'm obsessively listening to the new Kasabian album and one track starts with a women talking; now, I'm not too sure what she's talking about but her voice is amazing and there's something quite hypnotic about it. The credits say it's from a film/documentary called Sans Soleil by Chris Marker. I've looked it up on Wikipedia and it sounds fascinating but at the end of a long day totally beyond my comprehension! It also seems to be still rather expensive to buy....wondered if anyone could tell me more about the film and it's creator.

Apologies if this has been mentioned on another thread [or if it should be somewhere else] but I'm obsessively listening to the new Kasabian album and one track starts with a women talking; now, I'm not too sure what she's talking about but her voice is amazing and there's something quite hypnotic about it. The credits say it's from a film/documentary called Sans Soleil by Chris Marker. I've looked it up on Wikipedia and it sounds fascinating but at the end of a long day totally beyond my comprehension! It also seems to be still rather expensive to buy....wondered if anyone could tell me more about the film and it's creator.Sans Soleil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sans_Soleil)

I was so intrigued by this...I checked and my library has this film!! I ordered it, it will take a few days to get, I'll report back after seeing it..
Thank you for bringing it to our attention Mo.

This gives me a chance to get on my soap box for a minute. This is what being a cinephile is all about for me. Seeking out the unusual and the lost and forgotten films and classic films, movies can be like time machines of sorts for us all. They certainly can transport us to other times and places.

Yes; I'm off shopping tomorrow and will see if it's at HMV....rather worried that, when I do get to see it I find it goes way above my head and I shall feel really dumb! Kasabian are a band that used to liken themselves to Oasis and had a somewhat yobbish profile [although most people I know like their music], so it's rather changed my opinion of them as well. There's another film/documentary called [I think] La Jette which is usually sold with Sans Soleil; that was made even earlier @ 1962. It fascinates me how we approach events and things that people do, depending on where we're coming from; how we forgive people so much if we actually like them but are intolerant to things that people do if we don't like them. Things may make more sense after seeing the film or [most probably] I'll be even more confused!!

Oo la la...I just watched La Jetée. As soon as I started watching it a light blub went off in my head! Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys was inspired by, and takes several concepts directly from, La Jetée.
I loved it.

La jetée is a 28-minute black and white science fiction film by Chris Marker. Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel.

The survivors of a destroyed Paris in the aftermath of World War III live underground in the Palais de Chaillot galleries. They 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 withstand the shock of time travel, but eventually settle upon a male prisoner who is up to the task; his vague but obsessive childhood memory of witnessing a woman (Hélène Chatelain) during a violent incident on the boarding platform ("The Jetty") at Orly Airport is the key to his journey back in time.

He is thrown back to the past again and again to a time prior to the war, when he had been a child. He repeatedly meets and speaks to the woman from his memory, who was present at the terminal. 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, but he asks to be instead returned to the pre-war time of his childhood, hoping to again find the woman. He is returned and does find her, but an agent of his jailers has followed. The man finds that the violent incident he partially witnessed as a child was his own death as an adult at the hands of the agent.

I started watching Sans Soleil, and hope to get back to it again, it was like a travel log and very interesting, I see what you mean about the woman's voice. But it is a nice day and I'm going back outside.

I highly recommend La Jetée though, they are together on a Criterion DVD.

La Jetée is on youtube...how about that.

Here is La Jetée (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RvmJan17q8)

Should get my copy at the weekend. Wonder if La Jette is one of the first films about time travel? and how many more films/tv programmes have explored the same concept..Back to the Future being one example I guess...I've never seen Twelve Monkeys although I'm a fan of Terry Gilliams [although,perhaps, more a fan of his mind rather than his films]

Should get my copy at the weekend. Wonder if La Jette is one of the first films about time travel? and how many more films/tv programmes have explored the same concept..Back to the Future being one example I guess...I've never seen Twelve Monkeys although I'm a fan of Terry Gilliams [although,perhaps, more a fan of his mind rather than his films]I love, really love 12 Monekys I own it and have watched it atleast 10 times if not more. Brad Pit and Bruce Willis are amazingly excellent in this movie. I find Madeline Stowe extremely annoying in every movie I have ever seen her in, and I can almost even stand her in this film. I could sure see where Terry Gilliam got his inspiration from La Jetee.

I too think Terry Gilliam has a brilliant mind.

I really like time travel movies, anything along that order, sometimes they don't make alot of sense, but if you don't think too much about them. You know, all the paradoxes invovled, it make my head hurt if I think about it too much.
The Time Machine was made in 1960, at the moment I can't think of any early time travel movie. Crikey...Time Travel movies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Time_travel_films)

Time Travel and Paradox (http://homepage.mac.com/billtomlinson/newtt.html)

Guess what! I had a feeling that I had Twelve Monkeys floating around the house somewhere and I've just found it. My son in law was throwing out a load of videos and I took them home with me [can't throw anything away, me]....I had a feeling that this was one of them but then had to work out where I'd put it and, hurrah, it was in this very room. Going to watch it tonight and will pick up my copy of La Jetee/Sans Soleil tomorrow. How exciting!

Guess what! I had a feeling that I had Twelve Monkeys floating around the house somewhere and I've just found it. My son in law was throwing out a load of videos and I took them home with me [can't throw anything away, me]....I had a feeling that this was one of them but then had to work out where I'd put it and, hurrah, it was in this very room. Going to watch it tonight and will pick up my copy of La Jetee/Sans Soleil tomorrow. How exciting!Hey that's great, I'll be anxious to hear what you think and especially the comparison of LaJetee and 12 Monkeys.

Haven't got round to watching it yet; BBC4 have had a series of programmes about the Apollo missions and I've been glued to the telly watching them; the archive footage is amazing. Annoyingly there was a repeat of a programme called The Martians and Us which explored English Literature and space travel; I watched half of it and, thinking it was repeated the next night missed all the stuff about HG Wells. What was interesting was that Aldous Huxley taught George Orwell at Eton; a bit like CS Lewis being at uni with Tolkien. [Huxley was a terrible teacher, and Orwell thought he was a complete plonker]

Well; have watched Sans Soleil and found the whole film as hypnotic as the clip that I heard...do I understand it? not a lot; feel as if I've had my brain pulled out with a pair of tweezers. Liked the bit where he said he was watching Japanese tv and thought that he had suddenly learnt Japanese because he understood what they were saying, then realised it was a programme in his own language [like, how wierd is it in a strange country when you hear someone speak English]. and the fact that he wondered how different peoples' memories were when there weren't photographs and film. I often wonder if I only remember things because I have a photo to remind me. Makes me want to see Lost in Translation again, and also makes me want to find out more about Japan and it's culture. Oh, I also like the bit about writing lists and someone who wrote a list of things that aren't worth doing; I suppose you could write a list of things that...aren't worth writing a list about.......will now watch La Jetee if the telly is vacant......

Well; have watched Sans Soleil and found the whole film as hypnotic as the clip that I heard...do I understand it? not a lot; feel as if I've had my brain pulled out with a pair of tweezers. Liked the bit where he said he was watching Japanese tv and thought that he had suddenly learnt Japanese because he understood what they were saying, then realised it was a programme in his own language [like, how wierd is it in a strange country when you hear someone speak English]. and the fact that he wondered how different peoples' memories were when there weren't photographs and film. I often wonder if I only remember things because I have a photo to remind me. Makes me want to see Lost in Translation again, and also makes me want to find out more about Japan and it's culture. Oh, I also like the bit about writing lists and someone who wrote a list of things that aren't worth doing; I suppose you could write a list of things that...aren't worth writing a list about.......will now watch La Jetee if the telly is vacant......I never watched all of Sans Soleil. I got side tracked and went camping and took it back to the Library.

But I loved La Jetee.

Ha, nothing could make me want to watch Lost in Translation again, I'd rather watched paint dry. Sometimes a movie just doesn't click for everybody and that one didn't do anything for me.

Sans Soleil reminded me of a Ric Burns documentary; I have always found them to by hypnotic. The bit in La Jetee where they were walking round the room full of stuffed animals was intriguing...a still photograph of two people who were actually moving but surrounded by animals that couldn't move but looked as if they could at any second..and when the girls eyes suddenly moved, it was like seeing a statue suddenly scratch it's nose or something. Can't wait to watch Twelve Monkeys, but a bit tired after a days babysitting and got a lot to catch up with on iplayer before next weeks programmes start.