Sans soleil. 1983. France. Written and directed by Chris Marker. DCP courtesy Janus Films. In French; English subtitles. 100 min.
Karen Cooper ran Film Forum for 51 years, from 1972, when it was in a small 50-seat loft space on the Upper West Side, until 2023, in its current West Houston Street location, where its adventurous mix of international features and wide-ranging repertory programs have made it one of the city’s most beloved and influential theaters. Cooper almost exclusively presented exclusive premiere runs; among the many films she introduced to American audiences were Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975, premiered at Film Forum in 1983), Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning (1990), Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb (1994), and Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991). Cooper was particularly drawn to formally experimental documentary films, and in 1983 she premiered Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil, a globetrotting, philosophical essay film that travels from Japan to Iceland to San Francisco, where Marker tracks down the locations of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Vincent Canby of the New York Times dismissed it as “a totally self-absorbed movie,” but it is regarded now as one of Marker’s essential works.