Owls at Noon Prelude: The Hollow Men

29 August 2008 - 4 October 2008

Venue: Gus Fisher Gallery, 74 Shortland Street
Contact: For further information please email gusfishergallery@auckland.ac.nz
Website: http://www.gusfishergallery.auckland.ac.nz

Born in 1921, French filmmaker Chris Marker has been making films since the 1950s and is a pioneer of the film-essay. His approach developed out of his early experiences making travel books, combining images with texts. This exhibition, organised by the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, poignantly juxtaposes his major recent video installation Owls at Noon Prelude: The Hollow Men (2005) and his classic sci-fi time travel film La Jetée (1962). Owls at Noon Prelude was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York for its reopening in 2004. This eight-screen video installation - the first part of an envisaged history of the 20th century - was inspired by a T.S. Eliot poem reflecting on Europe as a wasteland following World War I. La Jetée is a story of time-travel, memory and impossible love, which has inspired many other films, including Terry Gilliam's 1995 feature Twelve Monkeys. It also concerns the aftermath of war, this time an imagined Third World War.

An exhibition from the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, thanks to Peter Blum Gallery, New York.

Exhibition opens at 5.30pm on Friday 29 August.