Jetty Images

Chris Marker's famous, haunting 28-minute short film La Jetée(1962), which I caught for the first time on Turner Classic Movies' short film festival the other day, remains a must-see for fans of film and photography. The subject of a post-World War III time travel experiment is repeatedly sent back to meet the woman whose face became fixated in his memory as a child, after they both witnessed a man's death at an airport. If that sounds familiar, yes, this film was the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys. La Jetée is shot entirely as a series of still photographs, with the exception of a motion shot of the woman's eyes opening which unfortunately is pretty hard to make out in this Google video (it's around the 18:55 mark). Except for one out-of-print short film collection, I don't believe the film is currently available on dvd in America.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a version in the original French w/ English subtitles to post. So this is the dubbed version (created by Marker, as he apparently is not a fan of subtitles). But the recording of the narration has a hissy quality that makes it sound oddly, convincingly more like a document of the experiment in the film (in my opinion, anyway).