“If they don’t see happiness in the picture at least they’ll see the black”: Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil and the Lyotardian Sublime

• Main Author: Sarah French
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven 2010-01-01
• Series: Image and Narrative : Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative
• Subjects: sublime, memory, time, temporality, indeterminacy, unpresentable, Sans Soleil, Chris Marker
• Online Access: http://www.imageandnarrative.be/index.php/imagenarrative/article/view/55
• ISSN: 1780-678X

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 </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><strong><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%;" lang="EN-GB">Abstract (E): </span></strong><strong><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%; font-weight: normal;" lang="EN-GB">This paper examines Chris Marker’s film <em>Sans Soleil </em>in relation to Jean-François Lyotard’s theory of the sublime. Through an </span></strong><strong><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%; font-weight: normal;" lang="EN-GB">analysis of the film’s representation of memory, time and temporality it will argue that Marker’s film effectively “invokes the unpresentable in presentation itself” (Lyotard, 1992: 15).</span></strong></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%;" lang="EN-GB"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;"><strong><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%;" lang="FR">Abstract (F):</span></strong><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%;" lang="FR"> Cet article examine le film <em>Sans Soleil</em> de Chris Marker en relation avec la théorie du sublime de Jean-François Lyotard. À travers une analyse de la représentation de la mémoire, du temps et de la temporalité du film, il soutient que le film de Marker invoque d’une manière effective “l’irreprésentable dans la représentation même” (Lyotard, 1992: 15).</span></p>