6 August 1980 - Chris Marker is in town

From a long article published in Cahiers du Cinéma in 1981 gathering Serge Daney's travel notes on the 1980 Honk Kong Frestival.

6 August. Encounters. Chris Marker is in town. He goes back to where he's been and films "randomly", rather happy to have emerged from the adventure of A Grin Without a Cat. His friend Terayama shoots in HK. The festival staff organises a lunch. Marker tells me that HK (which he doesn't like) has changed a lot. He comes from Okinawa and is on his way to China where he hasn't been since Sundays in Beijing. During the meal (on a very hot day), we talk about several things: Bruce Lee's mysterious death, the rumour that the Red Army guards may have filmed things during the cultural revolution. What happened to these films? Will we see them one day? What do they do with films over there? Do they archive them? Someone shows me the press clip of a Chinese newspaper talking about the fire at the warehouse of the Cinémathèque française. And also, why preserve / curate? Cinema will perhaps have been the collective dream of the 20th century? Marker is going to take pictures in Cat Street. We leave each other.

First published in Cahiers du Cinéma, issue 320, February 1981. Reprinted in La maison cinéma et le monde, Volume 1, POL 2001, p.496. Translation: Laurent Kretzschmar.