A Grin without a Cat

Legendary French filmmaker Chris Marker's epic film-essay on the global political conflicts of the 1960s and 70s.

Peerlessly assembled from hundreds of vintage newsreels and photos and guided by Marker's singularly poetic narration, A Grin without a Cat (Le fond de l'air est rouge) weaves together footage of the Vietnam War and protests against it, the death of Che Guevara, May '68 in Paris, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the overthrow of Allende in Chile. The historical panorama allows us to witness the ultimate fate of the "New Left."

Marker's film was released in France in 1977, then reshaped by the filmmaker in 1993 in the wake of what had been for many on the Left an unthinkable event: the demise of the Soviet Union.

When finally opening theatrically in the U.S. on May Day, 2002, The Nation praised it as "allusive filmmaking, encyclopedic in ambition, profound in understanding, playful enough in form to make you smile sometimes at the tricks of history. Though Marker has made an elegy to the left, he would prefer that you leave the theater invigorated...."

With voiceovers by Jim Broadbent and Cyril Cusack and music by Luciano Berio. (180 mins.)