- A portrait and thematic rerun of one of the 20th century's greatest and most misunderstood filmmakers, Chris Marker.
- Ten Lives of a Cat attempts to rediscover the essence of Chris Marker's films by revisiting shooting locations, borrowing motifs and equipment, in order to create a portrait of the artist from a unique first hand experience. In making this film, my aim was not only to deepen my personal understanding of Chris Marker's work, but to reaffirm his position as a figurehead for a new generation of progressive, DIY, and experimental artists. Furthermore, I believe the film is representative of Marker's own artistic philosophy, which throughout his oeuvre advocated for the democratisation of knowledge, culture and artistic expression through technology. In this regard I believe Ten Lives of a Cat is a defining work about Marker, as ultimately it aligns much more closely with his personal artistic sensibility than most of the current discourse surrounding his work.
When I first discovered the work of Chris Marker, it felt like I had finally uncovered the missing link in starting to understand, and piece together my own artistic sensibility. For as long as I can remember, I had been striving for something that could land somewhere between sincere and irreverent, personal and transcultural, retrospective but progressive... then suddenly, there it was. With an incomparable filmography, fully realised and fleshed out, with inconceivable complexity and depth.
Immediately I set to watching, reading, buying, downloading, everything I could get my hands on. Which as it turned out, was not exactly the haul I had imagined. As even just a few years ago, Chris' work and it's broader surrounding critical dialogue, was still mostly inaccessible.
It seemed ironic that such an exceptional and prolific artist, particularly one so deeply entrenched in the advent of D.I.Y and digital art, could somehow be separated from it's progression and evolution. That's when I decided to make this film. To realign his unique sensibility, with the ambitions of a new generation, attempting to find truth in the "Information Age".
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By what name was Ten Lives of a Cat: A film about Chris Marker (2023) officially released in Canada in English?
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