Chris Marker's La Jetée is 28 minutes long and almost entirely made up
of black-and-white still images. Since its release in 1964, this
legendary French film - which Marker described as a 'photo-novel' - has
haunted generations of viewers and inspired writers, artists and
film-makers. Its spiralling time-travel narrative has also influenced
many other films, including the Terminator series
and Terry Gilliam's Hollywood 'remake' Twelve Monkeys (1995).
But as Marker rarely gave interviews, little is really known about the
origins of La Jetée or the ideas behind it. In this groundbreaking
study, Chris Darke draws on rare archival material, including previously
unpublished correspondence and production documents, to examine the
making of the film. He explores how Marker's only fiction film was
influenced both by his early work as a writer and by Alfred Hitchcock's
Vertigo (1958), and considers how La Jetée's images can be seen to
'echo' throughout Marker's extraordinarily diverse oeuvre.