101 Films You Need to See Before Graduation: Sans Soleil

(Chris Marker, 1983) 

Chris Marker’s peerless Sans soleil is the record of an unseen man wandering the globe (Japan, San Francisco, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland) and writing letters to a distant woman who is made to see the world through his eyes. Marker explores time and memory through a surreal synthesis of images and video. His contemporary Sarah Maldoror, the subject of recent Wex exhibition Sarah Maldoror: Tricontinental Cinema, provided footage she shot of liberation fighters in Guinea-Bissau that Marker incorporated into the film. Voted the third best documentary of all-time in a 2014 Sight and Sound poll. (103 mins., DCP)

In 1995, the Wexner Center presented Silent Movie, the first solo gallery exhibition devoted to the French poet, filmmaker, and photographer Marker. The exhibition was curated by then Curator of Media Arts Bill Horrigan, who passed away in May. These screenings are presented in his memory.