Join us Thursday, October 24, at 6 pm, for a screening of two French classics: Chris Marker’s  La Jetée (1962, France, 28 min., 35mm to digital transfer) and Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend (1967, France/Italy, 105 min., 35mm to digital transfer), which screens as part of our Nature’s Underworld Film Series, featuring eight films inspired by the exhibition Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman: Journey to Nature’s Underworld, and our Whole Grain: Experiments in Film and Video program.

La Jetée is one of the most influential, radical science-fiction films ever made, a tale of time travel told in still images. Chris Marker, filmmaker, poet, novelist, photographer, editor, and now videographer and digital multimedia artist, has been challenging moviegoers, philosophers, and himself for years with his complex queries about time, memory, and the rapid advancement of life on this planet.

Weekend is a scathing late-sixties satire from Jean-Luc Godard, and is considered one of cinema’s great anarchic works. Determined to collect an inheritance from a dying relative, a bourgeois couple travel across the French countryside while civilization crashes and burns around them. Featuring a justly famous sequence in which the camera tracks along a seemingly endless traffic jam, and rich with historical and literary references, Weekend is a surreally funny and disturbing call for revolution, a depiction of society reverting to savagery, and— according to the credits—the end of cinema itself.

About Nature’s Underworld Film Series

Nature’s Underworld Film Series features both popular Hollywood cinema and experimental works that examine humankind’s strained relationship with the environment. The series is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman: Journey to Nature’s Underworld. Dion and Rockman, both film lovers, have cited many of these films as sources of inspiration. The series includes a special screening of Life of Pi (2012) on September 30, at which Alexis Rockman will introduce the film and talk about his experience working on it.

– Thursday, September 12, 6 pm: The Birds (1963)

– Tuesday, September 17, 6 pm: A Zed & Two Noughts (1985)

– Monday, September 30, 6 pm: Life of Pi (2012)

– Thursday, October 17, 6 pm: Night of the Hunter (1955)

– Thursday, October 24, 6 pm: La Jetée (1962) and Weekend (1967)

– Thursday, November 14, 6 pm: Silent Running (1972)

– Thursday, November 21, 6 pm: Last Things (2022)

All screenings are free and open to the public.

About Whole Grain

The Tang Teaching Museum’s Whole Grain series explores classic and contemporary work in experimental film and video. Whole Grain is programmed by Assistant Director for Engagement Tom Yoshikami.