Sans Soleil
Looking for Narrative? in Vast Spaces?
The thesis of this essay is to attempt to grasp Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil (1983) and to independently derive its thesis. A survey of Sans Soleil occurs despite efforts to keep content theoretical. Marker’s video essay is presented through a series of letters written by Sandor Krasna and added to the soundtrack by Alexandra Stewart’s voiceover. Montage segments in Sans Soleil form a loose narrative with breaks in spatio-temporal continuity that often resemble news / archival footage. A few themes juxtapose historical black and white footage to more recent color footage. Sans Soleil images occur in theme-based segments, in contrast to random reports of newsflash.[1]
[1] Historical events for the year 1983 by month – http://www.eventshistory.com/date/1983/