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Grin Without a Cat

French film maker Chris Marker is best known in mainstream audiences for his dystopian sci fi film La Jetee, on which the Hollywood movie 12 Monkeys is based. But activists on the left also know him for his epic political documentary essay about the rise and fall of the new left: Grin Without a Cat, which Marker made in 1978. Grin Without a Cat, which is really two films in one, is a rarity, screened only a few times, a very difficult to obtain on video. More than 30 years after it’s original release, Icarus Films has restored the film, and released it in the US for the first time. Today we’ll take an in-depth look at this legendary film, its film maker, and the history he portrays. Grin Without a Cat focuses on the global political wars of the 60’s and 70’s: Vietnam, Bolivia, May ’68, Prague, Chile, and the fate of the New Left. Chock full of incredibly rare footage and with multiple narrators, the film is split into two parts called Fragile Hands and Severed Hands. One reviewer says of Grin Without a Cat: “Indispensable viewing… Marker dispassionately sorts through party politics, revolutionary rhetoric, and deadly propaganda to come to terms with what he has characterized as ‘the utopia of uniting in a common struggle those who revolt against poverty and those who revolt against wealth.’”

Thank you Gift:

A Grin Without a Cat – DVD – $150