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4 - Memory Maps and City Space

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2013

Isabelle McNeill
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Summary

Level Five (Chris Marker, 1997) opens with a vision of the contemporary city that implies a complex layering of temporalities and perspectives. The camera follows the circular motion of a hand moving a computer mouse then moves upwards to the monitor, zooming in on a video image of a city at night until it fills the screen and blurs out of focus, as if we are being sucked into that city image. Almost immediately there is a cut to a mobile shot where the camera moves along a road between high-rise buildings, illuminated with the lights of a city at night. This forward tracking shot is superimposed over another, still image of the calm, blank face of a statue. In Laura's voice we hear the following:

Est-ce que tout ça peut être autre chose que les jouets d'un dieu fou qui nous a créés pour les lui construire? Imaginez un homme de Neandertal qui a la vision de cette chose-là; il a juste eu une vision poétique pleine de mouvements et de lumière, il a vu une mer de lumière. Il ne sait pas faire le tri entre toutes les images qui se posent à l'intérieur de sa tête comme des oiseaux, aussi rapides et irrattrapables que des oiseaux. Pensées, souvenirs, visions. Pour lui, tout revient au même: une espèce d'hallucination qui lui fait peur. C'est une vision du même ordre qu'a eu William Gibson en écrivant Neuromancer et en inventant le cyberspace. Il a vu une espèce de mer des Sargasses, pleine d’algues binaires et sur cette image, les néandertaliens que nous sommes ont commencé à greffer leur propre vision, leurs pensées, leurs souvenirs, des misérables bribes d’informations. Mais aucun de nous ne sait ce qu’est une ville.

Type
Chapter
Information
Memory and the Moving Image
French Film in the Digital Era
, pp. 123 - 159
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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