A unique talent, Chris Marker makes documentaries that have some of the qualities of science fiction. If the global village truly exists, then Marker might be its mayor, a man who spreads himself round the world in film diaries, travel pieces and speculative reportage. Supposedly based on the letters of a globetrotting cameraman, the truly remarkable Sunless takes in France, Iceland, Japan, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau.

What Marker is seeking are all those quotidian details that might explain the great question of the twentieth century – ‘the co-existence of different concepts of time’ (space was the nineteenth century’s problem). Among very many other things, the film is the most intimate portrait of Tokyo yet made.

France, 1982
Colour
100mins.

Also screening with Sans soleil is Marker’s 1962 film, La Jetee