Product Description

Denise Bellon (1902-1999) was a pioneer in photojournalism. One of the original members of the Alliance Photo Agency, founded in Paris in 1934 and a precursor to Magnum Photo Agency, she was also a friend and associate of leading members of the surrealist movement from Dali and Duchamp, to Andre Breton.

REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS TO COME, co-directed by Chris Marker and Bellon's daughter Yannick, uses Bellon's photographs to create a dazzling historical portrait of the two momentous decades between 1935 and 1955.

Leaping back and forth in time, from family portraits of Bellon and her two daughters, to her unique photographic record of pre-war Paris the first surrealist exhibition, the 1937 Paris World s Fair, the birth of the Cinematheque Francaise, and the Popular Front to images from France's African colonies, the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War and the German Occupation, the images in this remarkable cine-essay are complemented by Chris Marker's singular commentary (read by actress Alexandra Stewart), a complex rumination on the interrelations between photography, memory, thought and history.

Bonus Film!
COLETTE by Yannick Bellon (26 min.)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63509 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-09-02
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 42 minutes

Review
Unforgettable! --Elvis Mitchell, The New York Times

Review
A dazzling montage of images. --Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

Review
The film's sheer beauty is enrapturing. --Jessica Winter, The Village Voice

Customer Reviews

Bellon & Marker
Remembrance of Things to Come is a typical Chris Marker film when it is as it should be. Poetic, a flow of images and very re-watchable. This film was made together with Yannick Bellon, daughter of photographer Denise Bellon (1902-1999). The film consists of Bellon's pictures from the midwar period, starting with the surrealist exhibition in Paris 1937. The photos are striking - some macabre (war casualties) and some beautiful. This period seems like a strange land today, but at the same time many things defining our time was concieved then.
The flow of still pictures, the narrator track and the short length (42 minutes) reminds of La Jetee in style, but this is a documentary rather than fiction. As La Jetee and as Sans Soleil, Remembrance of Things to Come is very poetic and easy to watch and listen to, almost hypnotic. If you like Chris Marker's La Jetee and/or La Soleil, you will probably like this.

There is only one narrator track in english (there must have been a french original, as on Criterions La Jetee disc). There is one extra material: a 26 minutes documentary by Bellon from 1950.