The Battle of Ten Million
La bataille des dix millions
BELGIUM, FRANCE, CUBA / 1970 / French / B&W / Video (Original: 16mm) / 58 min
Directors, Script, Editing: Chris Marker, Valérie Mayoux
Image: Santiago Alvarez, ICAIC
Music: Léo Brouwer
Production Companies: K.G. Productions, SLON, RTB, ICAIC
Source: ISKRA
In 1970, Cuba’s Commander Castro set a goal to increase the nation’s sugar cane harvest to 10 million tons, in a policy that ultimately ended in failure. This film is structured primarily from images from Santiago Álvarez’s Departure at 18:00.
Report on Paris: Words Have a Meaning
On vous parle de Paris: Maspero, les mots ont un sens
FRANCE / 1970 / French / B&W / Video (Original: 16mm) / 19 min
Director, Photography, Editing: Chris Marker
Production Companies: SLON, SAGA
Source: ISKRA
In this film, Marker profiles François Maspero, who runs a left-wing publishing house and bookstore. Maspero’s work is to publish books written by revolutionaries from around the world, and overlaps with the mission of Marker’s SLON collective—to directly communicate the voices of people involved in political struggle.
Report on Brazil: Carlos Marighela
On vous parle du Brésil: Carlos Marighela
FRANCE / 1970 / French / B&W / Video (Original: 16mm) / 17 min
Director, Script, Editing: Chris Marker
Production Company, Source: ISKRA
In November 1969, Carlos Marighela, the leader of the resistance movement against the Brazilian military dictatorship, was killed by a police battalion of eighty officers. Through stock press photos and images of demonstrations, as well as interviews, this film tells of the difficult situation that Brazil faced at the time, a story that could never been seen on mainstream television news.
Report on Prague: The Second Trial of Artur London
On vous parle de Prague: Le deuxième procès d’Artur London
FRANCE / 1971 / French / B&W / Video (Original: 16mm) / 30 min
Director, Editing, Narration: Chris Marker
Photography: Pierre Dupouey
Production Companies: SLON, SAGA
Source: ISKRA
Marker took still photographs used in Costra-Gavras’s The Confession, a film based on a memorandum left behind by Artur London, who fell victim to a false-accusation plot devised by a radical Stalinist. Report on Prague was shot during the production of that film. Through interviews with the director, actors, and London himself, this film complexly interweaves cinema and reality.
The Train Rolls On
Le train en marche
FRANCE / 1971 / French / B&W / Video / 32 min
Director, Script, Editing: Chris Marker
Photograph: Jacques Loiseleux
Narration: Francois Périer
Production Company: SLON
Source: ISKRA
Alexander Medvedkin gets on a train and cuts across the vast landscape of the Soviet Union, filming en route and cutting and screening his work on site as the central figure in the political film movement “cine-train.” In 1971 in Paris, Marker interviews Medvedkin about this cine-train. As seen in the opening of this film, which ties together documentary images in avant-garde montage, the themes of this film are eye, hand, and train.