Wexner Center Store First, Exclusive Retailer of Chris Marker DVD

The Wexner Center Store is again the exclusive retail home (for a limited time) for a DVD by legendary French filmmaker Chris Marker. Icarus Films’ latest DVD release of a Marker film, A Grin Without a Cat, will be available from the WC Store (both in-store and online) for one month (through May 5) before being made available at other retail outlets. Last year, the Wexner Center opened a “Chris Marker Store” when it was again the exclusive outlet (for six months) of a batch of Marker DVDs.

A three-hour overview of the worldwide political upheavals of the ’60s and ’70s, Grin was released in 1977, re-released in 1993 and shown here in 2002 (but never before released on DVD). On the occasion of its theatrical release, Susan Sontag gushed, "Magnificent. The energy and optimism and tragedy of decades of political activism are rendered with that mental restlessness and ingenious pathos typical of Marker's great films."

Marker—the visionary filmmaker behind such inimitable works as La jetée, Sans Soleil, ¡Cuba Si!, and many others—has had a lengthy relationship with the Wexner Center, starting with the gallery installation Silent Movie, which was commissioned by and premiered at the Wex in 1995 and has been touring around the world ever since (stills from which will be on view at the Peter Blum Gallery in New York this summer). Bill Horrigan, the Wexner Center’s Director of Media Arts—who curated Silent Movie—also curated the Chris Marker: Staring Back, a show featuring about 200 of Marker’s photographs taken around the globe over the decades, which was on view in the summer of 2007 and has since toured to New York and Zurich to critical acclaim, and is traveling to São Paulo this summer (July 14–September 28, 2009).